CHARLES'FRANCIS-BARNARD 


HIS  LIFE  AND  Y/ORK 


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CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD 


A   SKETCH    OF 


HIS  LIFE   AND   WORK 


FRANCIS  TIFFANY 


BOSTON    AND    NEW   YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 

($lje  i!^ttjer?ibe  ^nU^  CambriDgc 

1895 


Copyright,  1895, 
By  AUGUSTA  BARNARD. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press ,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Ca 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I. 

Introductory  

I 

II. 

Old  Boston  

5 

III. 

Joseph  Tuckerman 

11 

IV. 

Birth  and  School  Life    . 

23 

V. 

At  Harvard  College  . 

•       33 

VI. 

In  the  Divinity  School    . 

39 

VII. 

Ordination 

.      46 

VIII. 

Brief  Married  Life  . 

51 

IX. 

The  Children's  Church 

.      55 

X. 

Plea  for  a  New  Building 

68 

XI. 

Warren  Street  Chapel 

.      78 

XII. 

New  Ways  with  Children 

93 

XIII. 

Setting  Object  Lessons 

.     107 

XIV. 

<'  The  Dancing  Parson  "     . 

123 

XV. 

Thomas   Starr   King  and   Robert 

C. 

Winthrop 

135 

XVI. 

The  Floral  Processions 

.     150 

XVII. 

Old  Chapel  Boys 

166 

XVIII. 

The  Inevitable  Day     . 

.     176 

XIX. 

An  Outing  in  the  South  . 

185 

XX. 

Conclusion 

.     196 

910320 


CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 


I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 


Whether  the  stor}^  of  ..any,  (*nterpri&e  in 
religious  philanthropy  is  worth  the  telling 
hinges  mainly  on  a  single  point :  Wii5;the 
enterprise  a  simple  repetition  of  what  had 
been  done  a  hundred  times  before,  or  was 
it  fruitfully  original  in  character?  Were 
its  inspiring  ideas  seminal  ? 

When,  for  example,  Charles  L.  Brace 
founded  in  New  York  his  Newsboys' 
Home,  he  planted  an  organic  seed,  and 
that  in  as  literal  a  sense  as  the  wheat  or 
maize  the  farmer  sows  in  his  field.  To 
start  one  more  Sunday-school,  in  which  to 
try  to  make  on  the  little  waifs  of  the  street 
a  few  fleeting  impressions,  as  speedily  to 
vanish  as  the  dew  under  the  glare  of  the 
sun,  was  no  object  of  his.    What  he  aimed 


2  CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

at  was  to  substitute  in  the  place  of  an 
environment  of  outcast  neglect,  thriftless- 
ness,  gambling,  and  profligacy,  an  environ- 
ment of  friendliness,  decency,  stimulus  to 
economy  and  ambition,  along  with  religious 
suggestions  of  the  ideal  of  a  higher  life. 
Steadily  the  germ  hidden  in  the  project  of 
the  home  in  the  heart  of  the  city  for  home- 
less children  expanded  into  that  of  ten 
thousand  genuine  homes  in  farmers'  fami- 
lies all  over  tlie  country.  From  city  to 
city  the  idea  spread  till  thousands,  who 
otherwise  would  have  perished  morally 
in  an  atmosphere  of  infection,  were  put 
under  permanent  conditions  of  health  and 
purity. 

Equally  did  this  hold  true  of  the  foun- 
dation in  1834  of  Warren  Street  Chapel  in 
Boston.  In  aim  and  method  it  was  the 
conception  of  a  distinctly  original  mind. 
It  constituted  an  epoch  in  the  philanthropic 
history  of  the  city.  It  enlisted  in  its  ser- 
vice the  enthusiastic  and  persistent  devo- 
tion of  men  and  women  of  the  most  varied 
kinds  of  ability.  It  went  out  into  the 
highways  and  hedges  to  compel  in  the 
outcast,  not  to  a  feast  of  dry  husks,  but 


INTRODUCTORY.  3 

to  a  festival  of  love,  joy,  and  light,  such 
as  Christ  pictures  in  the  scene  where  the 
wedding  garment  of  beauty  is  thrown  over 
every  guest.  Furthermore,  it  became  the 
prompter  of  numberless  like  enterprises  in 
other  fields.  And  it  owed  alike  its  con- 
ception and  the  spirit  of  consecrated  en- 
thusiasm with  which  it  was  sustained  to 
the  fertile  brain,  the  glowing  heart,  and  the 
rare  power  of  enkindling  others,  of  a  single 
man,  Charles  F.  Barnard.  For  these  rea- 
sons is  the  story  of  the  institution  and  of 
its  founder  worth  the  telling. 

In  this  world,  however,  nothing  starts  up 
a  purely  isolated  phenomenon.  Every 
institution  has  its  roots  in  the  past,  while 
drawing  its  nutriment  for  growth  out  of 
the  soil  of  the  present.  Human  original- 
ity is  no  power  of  creating  something  out 
of  nothing.  It  consists  in  capacity  to  be 
the  first  to  see  what  is  already  waiting  to 
be  seen  by  him  who  has  eyes.  Without, 
then,  clearly  reading  and  interpreting  the 
signs  of  the  times  immediately  antecedent 
to  any  new  movement,  it  is  impossible  to 
take  in  its  significance,  or  justly  to  estimate 
how  far  in  reality  it  was  a  distinct  contri- 


4  CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

bution.  For  this  reason,  before  describing 
the  life  of  Charles  F.  Barnard  and  the 
work  of  Warren  Street  Chapel,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  devote  a  preliminary  chapter  to  the 
social  condition  of  Boston  in  the  days  of 
his  early  youth,  and  to  the  vital  spiritual 
forces  in  play  that  would  inevitably  work 
on  one  of  his  especial  temperament 


IL 

OLD    BOSTON. 

The  Boston  of  Charles  F.  Barnard's 
boyhood  was  a  quiet  Httle  seaport  town 
of  40,000  inhabitants,  steadily  advancing, 
however,  to  a  population  of  55,000  when 
he  began  the  work  of  his  life.  Memorable 
changes  had  been  silently  going  on  in 
thought  and  feeling.  Insensibly,  to  the 
old  Puritan  Calvinism  had  succeeded  the 
milder  Arminian  symbols  of  faith,  these 
almost  insensibly  passing  on  to  avowed, 
but  not  distinctly  formulated,  Unitarian- 
ism,  to  which  the  great  majority  of  the 
influential  churches  of  the  city  had  gone 
over.  Through  the  growth  of  commerce, 
far  closer  intellectual  relations  had  been 
opened  up  with  the  richer  and  more  varied 
cultivation  of  Europe,  as  indeed,  through  a 
remarkable  class  of  merchant  sailors,  even 
with  the  thought  of  the  Orient.  Thus  the 
breath  of  a  wider  cosmopolitanism  in  liter- 


6  CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

ature,  art,  and  philosophy  was  beginning  to 
blow,  prophetic  of  new  movements  in  the 
intellectual  realm,  which  were  to  transform 
the  vigorous  but  narrow  localism  of  thought 
hitherto  prevalent  into  something  larger  in 
its  appeal  to  all  sides  of  human  nature. 
In  a  new  consciousness  of  the  whole  range 
of  his  being,  man  was  coming  to  himself. 
Already  had  Buckminster  and  Channing 
been  giving  eloquent  expression  to  a  reli- 
gion which  should  reconcile  liberty  of  rea- 
son with  glowing  hope  for  humanity  and 
fervor  of  piety.  It  was  the  dawn  of  the 
day  when  Emerson  should  reveal  the  light 
of  a  higher  religious  philosophy,  and  jus- 
tice and  mercy  to  the  disinherited  should 
find  heroic  advocacy  in  a  Garrison  cham- 
pioning the  enslaved,  a  Howe  the  blind, 
and  a  Dorothea  Dix  the  insane. 

The  side  on  which  a  temperament  of 
the  type  of  young  Barnard's  would  feel  it- 
self quickened  by  these  stimulating  influ- 
ences would  inevitably  be  the  religious 
and  philanthropic.  Fervid  piety  and  glow- 
ing love  of  humanity  were  the  dominant 
elements  of  his  nature ;  and  even  before 
he  was  ready  for  the  work  of  life,  a  move- 


OLD  BOSTON.  7 

ment  had  been  set  on  foot  and  a  pioneer 
had  appeared  that  were  to  decide  the  espe- 
cial field  on  which  those  elements  should 
come  into  play.  As  determining  causes, 
then,  in  shaping  his  subsequent  career,  it 
is  necessary  that  the  character  of  this 
movement  and  the  spirit  of  this  pioneer 
should  be  brought  vividly  before  the  mind. 
The  population  of  Boston,  say  up  to 
1828,  had  been  one  of  the  most  homogene- 
ous in  nationality,  customs,  and  faith  any- 
where to  be  found.  In  its  steel-cut  die  the 
Puritanism  of  the  past  had  stamped  it  in 
rigid  shape  and  in  sharp  outlines.  Of  its 
13,000  families,  8,800  were  regularly  con- 
nected with  the  churches  of  the  city,  and 
progress  in  enlightenment  went  on  inside 
and  not  outside  of  these  churches.  Among 
the  4,200  unchurched  families,  however,  a 
great  amount  of  ignorance,  poverty,  and 
vice  had  become  developed.  Puritanism 
had  an  incisive  way  of  its  own  in  establish- 
ing, even  on  earth,  both  its  heaven  and  its 
hell,  —  away  inevitable  in  its  working  just 
in  so  far  as  it  patterned  itself  on  the  meth- 
ods and  on  the  image  of  its  God.  With 
all  its  grand  virtues,  sympathetic  appreci- 


8  CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

ation  of  the  wretched  natural  endowment 
and  terrible  temptations  of  the  outcast  non- 
elect  was  not  its  strong  point.  Relying  on 
a  supernatural  call  as  the  one  really  efficient 
agency  in  reformation,  it  formed  few  habits 
of  studying  the  influence  of  such  second- 
ary causes  as  decent  tenements  versus  reek- 
ing cellars,  soap  and  water  versus  filth, 
innocent  social  recreations  versus  rum  and 
gin.  The  abyss,  then,  between  its  strong, 
respectable,  and  highly  moral  church-going 
community  and  the  feeble-minded,  will-less, 
and  vicious  outside  element  was  one  yawn- 
ing wider  year  by  year.  Absolutely  need- 
ful, then,  was  it  becoming  that  this  theolo- 
gical habit  of  disregarding  what  were  called 
secondary  causes,  —  a  habit  traditionally 
passed  on  to  the  generation  that  had  really 
outgrown  the  dogmas  under  which  it  was 
shaped,  —  must  be  eradicated  root  and 
branch,  and  these  secondary  causes  be 
made  to  flare  out  before  the  eye  as  primary 
causes. 

Not  only,  however,  had  Boston  already 
developed  an  element  of  its  own  kith  and 
kin  in  blood,  rapidly  tending  to  pass  from 
poverty  and    vice    to    chronic    pauperism, 


OLD  BOSTON.  9 

but  now  a  new  evil  was  to  accentuate  the 
danger.  The  tide  of  foreign  immigration, 
destined  in  a  comparatively  short  time  to 
rise  to  such  colossal  proportions,  was  be- 
ginning to  bring  in  large  numbers  of 
aliens,  strangers  in  language,  faith,  and 
customs  to  the  native-born  population. 
Paupers  already,  many  of  them,  and  sure 
through  illness  and  ignorance  of  the  ways 
of  a  new  country  to  furnish  constant  fresh 
recruits  even  from  the  ranks  of  the  more 
competent,  a  problem  of  ever-growing 
complexity  was  forced  on  all  thoughtful 
minds.  Evidently  the  old  methods  would 
no  longer  suffice.  To  quote  the  words  of 
Dr.  Edward  E.  Hale :  "  So  soon  as  the 
miracle  of  foreign  immigration  began  to 
show  its  proportions,  it  became  clear  that 
the  machinery  of  the  Church,  as  framed 
by  Cotton,  Ward,  Newton,  and  the  rest, 
was  not  adequate  to  the  occasion.  .  .  . 
The  Church,  by  that  machinery,  virtually 
proposed  to  any  stranger  who  might  ar- 
rive here  with  his  family  from  Connaught 
or  Bavaria  or  Genoa,  that  he  should  pur- 
chase a  piece  of  property  called  a  pew, 
that  he  should  lead  his  family  there  on 


lO         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

Sunday  at  half-past  ten  in  the  morning, 
and  at  a  quarter-past  two  in  the  afternoon. 
If  he  would  do  this,  the  Church  was  ready 
on  the  other  hand  to  give  him  religious 
instruction.  Such  an  offer,  not  made  in- 
deed with  any  urgency,  was  of  course 
never  accepted." 

If  the  mountain  would  not  come  to 
Mohammed,  then  Mohammed  must  go  to 
the  mountain.  Such  was  the  thought 
which  now  took  irresistible  possession  of 
the  mind  of  a  providential  man,  Joseph 
Tuckerman,  to  whose  electric  personality, 
far-reaching  views,  and  absolute  consecra- 
tion of  spirit,  it  is  necessary  to  devote  a 
separate  chapter. 


Ill, 

JOSEPH     TUCKERMAN. 

Joseph  Tuckerman  had  graduated  from 
Harvard  College  as  far  back  as  1798,  in 
the  same  class  with  the  great  divine  Wil- 
liam Ellery  Channing,  the  great  jurist 
Joseph  Story,  and  the  great  painter  Wash- 
ington Allston.  Endeared  to  his  class- 
mates by  his  captivating  social  charm,  he 
yet  seemed  a  creature  born  for  pure  en- 
joyment of  air  and  sunshine,  exempt  by 
happy  birthright  from  every  call  to  the 
serious  duties  of  life.  Enough  for  him 
to  live  and  give  thanks  in  so  beautiful  a 
world.  Pure  and  innocent  as  a  maiden, 
no  trace  of  vice  soiled  him,  only  so  un- 
speakably happy  was  he  —  a  happiness  he 
carried  with  him  to  the  latest  day  of  life  — 
that  his  seemed  the  dower  from  heaven  of 
eternal  childhood,  free  to  float,  at  the  will 
of  every  passing  breeze,  like  the  clouds  in 
the  blue  sky. 


12         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

Settled  in  1801  in  the  ministry,  in  the 
town  of  Chelsea,  Massachusetts,  a  position 
into  which,  on  a  simple  tide  of  kindly  and 
devout  feeling,  he  had  drifted  with  no  ade- 
quate preparation  for  his  work,  he  yet  re- 
mained there  twenty-five  years,  till  the  age 
of  fifty,  without  really  coming  to  himself 
and  finding  what  he  was  made  for.  Dili- 
gent and  faithful  in  his  duties,  he  was 
none  the  less  dull  and  uninspiring  as  a 
preacher.  In  the  round  of  routine  work 
necessitated  by  ministering  to  a  commu- 
nity of  well-to-do,  respectable  people,  al- 
ready constituting  a  sort  of  average,  com- 
monplace Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  earth, 
his  high  -  wrought  emotional  nature  re- 
mained a  damped  fire. 

To  bring  out  the  Jesus  element  in  him, 
Joseph  Tuckerman  needed  the  appeal  of 
the  publicans  and  harlots,  needed  the 
awakening  of  the  sense  of  the  "  joy  among 
the  angels  in  heaven  over  one  sinner  that 
repenteth  more  than  over  ninety  and  nine 
just  men  that  need  no  repentance."  As 
he  looked  out  from  his  study  windows  in 
Chelsea  across  the  harbor  and  the  widen- 
ing bay  white  with  sails,  he  would  forget 


JOSEPH  TUCKERMAN.  13 

his  books,  forget  his  half-finished  laborious 
sermon,  while  his  yearning  soul  took  flight 
with  the  sea-gulls  circling  round  the  in- 
bound and  outbound  vessels,  brooding,  in 
such  sympathetic  flight,  over  the  lives  of 
the  wandering  sailors  with  no  home  nor 
sanctuary  but  the  brothel  and  the  grog- 
shop in  every  port.  His  first  act,  then, 
in  the  direction  of  his  new  ministry  of 
mercy  was  to  organize,  in  181 2,  the  Sea- 
man's Friend  Society,  in  the  chapel  of 
which  was  destined  later  to  preach  for  so 
many  years  the  famous  Father  Taylor,  a 
man  of  so  mighty  a  flood  of  devoutness 
and  love,  allied  with  so  resplendent  a  pic- 
torial imagination,  as  to  startle  every 
hearer  with  the  sense  that  here  stood  one 
descended  not  in  name  alone,  but  in  di- 
rect apostolic  succession,  from  the  poet- 
divine  Jeremy  Taylor. 

Health  at  last  failing  under  the  moping 
influence  of  parish  work.  Dr.  Tuckerman 
finally  determined,  in  1826,  to  resign  his 
pastorate  and  devote  himself  wholly  to  a 
ministry  to  the  poor  of  Boston.  From 
that  hour  he  was  a  new  man.  Finding 
that  the  classes  he  wanted  to  get  at  would 


14         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

not  go  to  the  established  churches,  he 
founded  a  chapel  of  his  own  in  Friend 
Street,  known  as  the  Circular  Building, 
for  familiar  religious  services.  Beginning 
his  wanderings  through  the  city,  "  he 
found  the  streets  filled  with  idle  children, 
large  families  occupying  the  damp  and 
dirty  cellars  of  Broad  and  Sea  streets, 
graduating  regularly  thence  to  the  hospi- 
tals and  almshouses.  Indefatigably  visit- 
ing from  house  to  house,  giving  practical 
counsel,  apprenticing  boys,  procuring  em- 
ployment for  adults,  starting  an  infant 
school,  attending  the  courts,  the  whole 
problem  of  poverty,  ignorance,  and  vice 
now  absorbed  him,  heart  and  head.  To 
enlighten  the  public  mind,  paper  after 
paper  was  circulated  by  him,  on  '  Wages 
of  Poor  Men  and  Women,'  '  Slop-Shops,' 
*  Causes  of  Poverty,'  *  Classes  of  the 
Poor,'  '  Day  Laborers  in  Winter,'  *  Fami- 
lies that  have  known  Better  Days,'  '  In- 
termediate Schools  for  Dull  Scholars.' 
Finding  ministers  of  religion  afraid  to  cry 
aloud  to  the  rich  men  of  Boston  to  desist 
from  renting  their  corner  stores  for  liquor- 
shops    and    their   front    cellars   for   tene- 


JOSEPH   TUCKERMAN.  15 

ments,  he  himself  cried  out  so  loudly  as 
to  make  the  city  ring  again^ 

"Appointed  in  1832  by  the  Massachu- 
setts House  of  Representatives  member  of 
a  special  commission  to  report  on  pau- 
perism, Dr.  Tuckerman  collected  so  care- 
fully facts  and  figures  that  his  report 
served  as  the  basis  of  reform  in  his  own 
State  and  was  quoted  by  other  legislatures. 
Indeed,  it  made  for  him  a  European  repu- 
tation, for  he  had  studied  the  whole  sub- 
ject in  the  parliamentary  debates  and  rul- 
ings of  the  English  law  courts  from  the 
date  of  Edward  III.,  as  well  as  in  those 
of  France  and  Germany."  Thence  the 
hearty  recognition  of  the  great  French 
philanthropist,  Baron  Degerando,  "  This 
man  understands  the  difference  between 
poverty  and  pauperism." 

Soon  the  work  revealed  itself  as  more 
than  any  one  man  could  do.  "  Dr.  Tuck- 
erman, however,  had  the  distinguishing 
faculty  of  great  men,  that  he  was  able  to 
incite  others.     When  he  appeared  before 

^  See,  for  an  admirable  account  of  the  life  and  journals 
of  Tuckerman,  two  articles  by  Eber  R.  Butler,  in  the 
October  and  December,  1890,  numbers  of  Lend  a  Hand. 


1 6         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

the  legislature,  he  was  backed  by  the  fore- 
most men  of  the  community,  the  Jacksons, 
the  Appletons,  the  Lawrences,  the  Per- 
kinses of  those  days."  Moreover,  in  his 
more  immediate  daily  duties  he  before 
long  associated  with  himself  three  devoted 
young  men,  Charles  F.  Barnard,  Frederick 
T.  Gray,  and  Robert  C.  Waterston.  The 
four  thousand  unchurched  families  should 
thus  be  divided  among  four  helpers.  Their 
business  was  to  see  that  there  should  be 
no  nests  of  disease,  moral  or  physical,  in 
the  town,  that  the  idle  man  should  find 
work,  that  existing  dens  of  temptation, 
into  which  strangers  most  readily  wander, 
should  be  abolished. 

Nothing  short  of  this  was  the  belief  of 
Dr.  Tuckerman  in  the  practical  power  of 
men  and  women  of  consecrated  lives,  hu- 
mane feelings,  intelligence,  and  good  sense, 
to  stamp  out  poverty  and  vice,  and  to 
bring  in  a  kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  A 
period  of  fairly  millennial  expectation  for 
society  had  already  been  inaugurated  by 
the  preaching  of  Channing,  and  welcomed 
by  many  lofty  spirits  ;  in  truth,  nothing 
short  of  an  exultant   sense  of   the  redis- 


JOSEPH  TUCKERMAN,  17 

covery  and  re-birth  of  the  prophetic  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  after  centuries  of  burial  in 
a  mediaeval  tomb.  This  day  seemed  the 
Scripture  fulfilled  in  their  ears :  "  The 
Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me,  because 
he  hath  anointed  me  to  preach  the  gos- 
pel to  the  poor ;  he  hath  sent  me  to  heal 
the  broken-hearted,  to  preach  deliverance 
to  the  captives,  and  recovering  of  sight  to 
the  blind,  to  set  at  liberty  them  that  are 
bruised,  to  preach  the  acceptable  year  of 
the  Lord."  Yet,  though  the  millennium 
came  not,  mighty  works  followed  for  the 
pauper,  the  slave,  the  waif  on  the  street, 
the  blind,  the  insane,  the  idiotic,  and  for 
the  emancipation  of  the  community  at 
large  from  cramping  traditions  and  gloomy 
superstitions.  Further,  as  on  one  line  of 
this  widespread  action  Joseph  Tucker- 
man  played  so  historic  a  part,  it  seems 
fitting,  in  closing  this  chapter,  to  show  the 
light  in  which  he  shone  before  his  own 
day  and  generation.  To  this  end,  no 
higher  testimonial  could  be  adduced  than 
a  few  extracts  from  the  tribute  paid  to  his 
memory  by  Dr.  Channing  :  — 

"  When  I  first  met  him  in  college,  he 


1 8         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

had  the  innocence  of  childhood,  but  he 
did  not  seem  to  have  any  serious  views  of 
life.  Three  years  he  passed  almost  as  a 
holiday.  .  .  .  How  often  has  he  spoken 
to  me  with  grief  and  compunction  of  his 
early  wasted  life !  .  .  .  On  leaving  college 
he  gave  himself  to  the  Christian  ministry ; 
but  with  the  unchastened  inconsideration 
of  his  youth,  he  plunged  into  its  duties 
with  little  preparation.  The  consequence 
was  a  succession  of  mortifications,  most 
painful  at  the  time,  but  of  which  he  after- 
wards spoke  as  a  merciful  discipline.  Here 
he  became  a  student,  a  faithful,  continu- 
ous student,  and  accumulated  much  know- 
ledge, and  devoted  no  little  time  to  the 
thorny  topics  of  theology. 

"  He  was  not,  however,  made  to  wear 
out  life  in  such  pursuits.  His  heart  was 
his  great  power.  Having  laid  a  good 
foundation  by  study,  an  unerring  instinct 
taught  him  that  study  was  not  his  voca- 
tion.    His  heart  yearned  for  active  life. 

"  At  first  he  entered  almost  tremblingly 
the  houses  of  the  poor  where  he  was  a 
stranger,  to  offer  his  sympathy  and  friend- 
ship.    But  '  the  sheep  knew  the  voice  of 


JOSEPH  TUCKERMAN.  19 

the  shepherd.'  From  the  first  moment  a 
relation  of  singular  tenderness  and  confi- 
dence was  established  between  them.  It 
seemed  as  if  a  new  fountain  of  love  had 
been  opened  within  him.  Cold,  storm, 
sickness,  severe  pain,  could  not  shut  him 
up  at  home.  No  favorite  of  fortune  could 
have  repaired  to  a  palace,  where  the  rays 
of  royal  favor  were  to  be  centred  on  him, 
with  a  more  eager  spirit  and  quicker  step 
than  our  friend  hastened  to  the  abodes  of 
want  in  the  darkest  alleys  in  our  city.  I 
cannot  forget  one  evening  when,  in  con- 
versing with  the  late  Dr.  Follen  and  my- 
self on  the  claims  of  the  poor,  and  on  the 
cold-heartedness  of  society,  he  not  only 
moved  us,  but  filled  us  with  amazement, 
by  his  depth  of  feeling  and  energy  of  ut- 
terance ;  nor  can  I  forget  how,  when  he 
left  us.  Dr.  Follen,  a  man  fitted  by  his 
own  spirit  to  judge  of  greatness,  said  to 
me,  'He  is  a  great  man.'  .  .  .  He  would 
sometimes  say  that  could  he,  on  leaving 
the  world,  choose  his  sphere,  it  would  be 
that  of  a  ministering  spirit  to  the  poor. 
In  this  there  was  no  blinding  enthusiasm. 
He  saw  distinctly  the  vices  which  are  often 


20         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

found  among  the  poor,  their  craft,  sloth, 
and  ingratitude.  The  coarsest  realities 
pressed  him  on  every  side.  But  amidst 
these  he  saw,  now  the  fainting  signs,  now 
the  triumphs,  of  a  divine  virtue.  It  was 
his  delight  to  relate  examples  of  patience, 
disinterestedness,  piety,  amid  severest  suf- 
ferings. 

"  In  carrying  on  this  good  work  Dr. 
Tuckerman  did  not  stand  alone.  He  be- 
gan his  labors  under  the  patronage  of 
the  American  Unitarian  Association.  At 
length,  to  insure  the  continuance  of  the 
ministry  at  large,  and  to  extend  its  opera- 
tion, a  union  or,  as  it  is  called,  a  Frater- 
nity of  several  chui-ches  in  the  city  was 
formed,  to  take  this  important  work  under 
its  guidance  and  care. 

"  His  religion  was  of  the  most  enlarged, 
liberal  character.  He  did  not  shut  himself 
up  even  in  Christ.  But  Christ  was  his  rock, 
his  defense,  his  nutriment,  his  life.  .  .  . 
The  horrible  thought  that  certain  portions 
of  society  are  to  be  kept  down  by  appeals 
to  their  superstition  and  fear  has  here 
received  a  refutation  very  cheering  to  the 
friends  of  humanity.     Dr.  Tuckerman  car- 


JOSEPH  TUCKERMAN.  21 

ried  among  the  poor  his  own  highest  views 
of  reh'gion,  and  often  spoke  to  me  of  the 
eagerness  with  which  they  were  received. 
He  was,  indeed,  too  wise  a  man  to  give 
them  in  an  abstract  form,  or  in  technical 
language.  They  were  steeped  in  his  heart 
before  they  found  their  way  to  his  lips ; 
and,  flowing  warm  and  fresh  from  this 
fountain,  they  were  drunk  in  as  living  wa- 
ters by  the  thirsty  souls  of  the  poor.  He 
was  naturally  happy.  There  were  next  to 
no  seeds  of  gloom  in  his  nature.  From 
these  elements  of  his  piety  naturally  grew 
up  a  hope  of  future  glory,  progress,  happi- 
ness, more  unmixed  than  I  have  known  in 
others.  He  would  talk  with  a  swelling 
heart,  and  in  the  most  genuine  language, 
of  immortality,  of  heaven,  of  nearness  to 
God.  His  hope  in  such  cases  tended  to 
fulfill  itself.  His  tones  awakened  a  like 
hope  in  the  fallen.  He  did  not  break  the 
bruised  reed,  or  quench  the  smoking  flax." 
Such,  then,  as  he  ever  gratefully  acknow- 
ledged, was  the  man  through  vital  contact 
with  whom  Charles  F.  Barnard,  the  sub- 
ject of  this  memoir,  was  kindled  to  the 
master  passion  of   his   life.     Years   after 


2  2  CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

he  wrote  of  his  first  encounter  with  Dr. 
Tuckerman  :  "  The  sight  that  evening,  the 
scenes  that  morning,  have  haunted  me 
ever  since,  and  will  till  I  die.  From  first 
to  last,  my  span  of  life  and  duty  has  borne 
the  impress  of  the  evening  and  the  morn- 
ing of  that  first  day.  *  If,'  cried  I,  *  these 
are  your  flock  and  that  is  your  chapel,  let 
me  be  your  helpmeet ! '  '  For  life  .f* '  asked 
he.  '  For  life ! '  added  I.  The  hearers 
were  humble  folks  of  the  lowly  sort, — 
men  and  women  hungry  and  thirsty  for 
the  bread  and  water  of  life,  whom  any 
lover  of  the  Lord  would  proudly  select  for 
His  own  among  all  the  congregations  of 
the  land.  And  then,  when  you  beheld  the 
curtain  lifted  that  had  hitherto  separated 
you  from  your  fellow-sufferers  and  fellow- 
sinners,  as  you  went  from  room  to  room, 
up  garret  and  down  cellar,  how  Christ-like 
seemed  their  visitor,  counselor  and  com- 
forter, healer  and  helper,  whom  heaven  re- 
vealed also  to  your  own  wondering,  rever- 
ing eye.  ...  So  he  meant  when  he  cried 
of  a  sinner  to  Channing,  *  I  must  have  that 
man's  soul ! '  So  he  hoped  when  he  cried 
of  Satan  to  Father  Taylor,  '  I  want  to  try 
love  on  him  I ' " 


IV. 

BIRTH    AND    SCHOOL    LIFE. 

Charles  Francis  Barnard  was  born 
April  17,  1808,  in  Boston,  Massachusetts, 
the  eldest  child  among  three  sons  and  one 
daughter.  His  father,  Charles  Barnard, 
was  senior  member  of  the  old  business 
firm,  Barnard,  Adams  &  Co.,  on  Commer- 
cial Wharf.  The  family  then  lived  in 
South  Street,  now  a  crowded  and  noisy 
thoroughfare  of  the  city,  but  at  that  time 
the  court  end  of  the  town,  where,  under 
the  shade  of  great  elms  and  horse-chest- 
nuts, rows  of  handsome  houses  lined  the 
street. 

As  in  the  case  with  so  many  of  the  early 
settlers  of  New  England,  the  Barnards 
came  of  a  fine  strain  of  Old  England  blood. 
The  first  of  the  family  to  seek  a  perma- 
nent home  in  the  new  world  bore  originally 
the  name  of  Vane,  which  he  changed  to 
Barnard,   the   name   of   his  wife's  family, 


24         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

because  his  own  father,  Sir  Henry  Vane 
of  Barnard  Castle  in  Durham,  had  been 
arraigned  for  high  treason,  beheaded  on 
Tower  Hill,  June  14,  1662,  and  deprived 
of  his  estates.  This  was  the  historic  Sir 
Henry  Vane,  once  governor  of  the  colony 
of  Massachusetts,  whose  virtues  Milton 
celebrates  in  his  noble  sonnet:  — 

"  Vane,  young  in  years,  but  in  sage  counsel,  old." 

On  the  maternal  side,  Charles  Francis 
Barnard  was  of  the  stock  of  the  Middle- 
tons  of  South  Carolina,  the  first  of  whom 
in  America,  Arthur  Middleton,  came  out 
under  royal  appointment  as  governor  of 
that  colony.  Through  him  the  lineage 
runs  back  in  unbroken  succession  to  Sir 
John  De  Willoughby,  a  Norman  knight, 
Lord  of  Willoughby  in  Lincolnshire  by 
gift  of  William  the  Conqueror. 

Though  a  more  cordially  democratic 
spirit  never  breathed  than  Charles  F.  Bar- 
nard himself,  nor  one  who  traced  more 
instinctively  the  descent  of  the  most  out- 
cast straight  back  through  Adam  to  God, 
the  founder  of  the  whole  family  in  heaven 
and  on  earth,  it  is  yet  historically  interest- 


BIRTH  AND  SCHOOL  LIFE.  25 

ing  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  instances 
in  New  England,  to  note  the  changes 
wrought  in  modes  of  life  and  career  by  a 
new  and  utterly  different  environment. 
Neither  —  though  it  be  held  by  many  in 
America  to  constitute  an  impertinent  re- 
flection on  others  to  presume  to  have 
descended  from  anyone  in  particular!  — 
should  it  be  set  down  as  gravely  reprehen- 
sible, even  in  a  philanthropist,  should  he 
have  felt  a  certain  sense  of  inward  satisfac- 
tion at  having  come  of  so  distinguished  a 
lineage.  No  trace,  however,  of  such  feel- 
ing was  ever  visible  in  the  subject  of  this 
memoir.  None  the  less,  blood  will  tell ;  if, 
certainly,  in  horses  on  the  race  track,  why 
not  in  men  in  the  race  of  life  ? 

As  a  boy,  Charles  F.  Barnard  was  forced 
to  follow  a  desultory  course  in  his  school 
education,  for,  though  muscular  in  frame 
and  abounding  in  animal  spirits,  he  was 
subject  to  intermittent  congestive  attacks 
that  rendered  long-continued  application 
an  impossibility.  Happily,  the  means  of 
his  father  were  ample  enough  to  secure  for 
him  frequent  changes  of  air  and  scene.  It 
is  not,  however,  till  the  year  1824,  when  he 


26         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

was  receiving  private  instruction  from  the 
master  of  the  Boston  Latin  School  in  prep- 
aration for  college,  that  we  come  upon 
any  record  of  his  actual  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings.    He  was  then  sixteen. 

In  those  now  far-back  days  it  was  a  cus- 
tom, descended  from  Puritan  times,  for 
thoughtful  young  people  to  keep  private 
journals.  Largely,  these  were  highly  sub- 
jective in  tone,  records  of  daily  moods  of 
feeling,  romantic  in  strain,  and  in  many 
cases  morbid.  No  trace,  however,  of  this 
last  is  visible  in  the  journals  which,  from 
this  date,  1824,  young  Barnard  began,  and 
assiduously  carried  on  for  many  years. 
They  were  written  in  thin  copy-books,  on 
the  opening  page  of  the  first  of  which 
stands  a  device  representing  a  globe  with 
an  anchor  suspended  from  it,  and,  be- 
neath, the  motto  "  Nil  Desperandum," 
translated,  "Don't  give  up  the  ship!"  —  a 
highly  characteristic  motto  in  this  instance 
as  showing  "  the  boy  the  father  of  the 
man." 

Purely  objective  in  tone,  these  daily  en- 
tries brim  over  with  enjoyment  of  every- 
thing  going   on    in    the   city   or   country 


BIRTH  AND  SCHOOL  LIFE.  27 

around  about  him.  Here  is  manifestly  an 
open  air  constitution,  instinctively  seeking 
sunshine,  exercise,  and  fun.  The  sole 
allusions  to  anything  of  a  painful  nature 
are  frequent,  though  always  brief,  refer- 
ences to  severe  headaches.  In  these,  how- 
ever, there  is  positive  biographic  value, 
showing  as  they  do  that  here  was  a  system 
unfitted  for  confinement  and  protracted 
study,  and  which  would  find  its  future 
career  largely  determined  by  this  constitu- 
tional factor.  Apart  from  this,  the  abid- 
ing consciousness  manifest  is  one  of  im- 
mense capacity  for  joy,  together  with  the 
impulse  to  constant  activity. 

With  only  an  occasional  reference  to  the 
Latin  or  Greek  book,  the  algebra  or  geom- 
etry, on  which  he  is  engaged  in  the  Bos- 
ton Latin  School,  it  is  mainly  his  keen 
interest  in  outside  objects,  young  Barnard 
cares  to  jot  down  in  his  journals.  If  there 
is  a  fire  in  the  city,  he  is  on  hand ;  if  a 
Dutch  ship  arrives  in  port,  he  is  sure  to 
board  her;  if  a  new  bank  is  to  be  built 
with  a  portico  of  granite  columns,  it  is  the 
huge  wagon  with  hind  wheels  nine  feet  in 
diameter,  and  drawn  by  thirty-four  yoke  of 


28         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

oxen,  that  secures  him  as  an  admiring 
spectator.  Furthermore,  his  exuberant 
delight  in  natural  scenery  gets  constant 
expression,  as  well  as  in  birds  and  flowers. 
Evidently  he  finds  the  world  a  very  fasci- 
nating scene  to  live  in,  and  is  storing  mind 
and  heart  with  a  wealth  of  picturesque 
sights  and  incidents  that  will  make  it  the 
delight  of  future  children  to  hear  him  talk 
to  them.  With  such  abounding  spirits  the 
boy  element  will  be  sure  to  keep  up  its 
play  in  him  throughout  life ;  and  is  it  not 
always  the  grown-up  boy  who  sympatheti- 
cally understands,  loves,  and  truly  helps 
the  actual  boy? 

Let  a  few  extracts  from  these  school-day 
journals  serve  as  straws  to  show  how  the 
wind  was  abidingly  blowing  in  his  mind. 

"Aug.  1 6,  1824.  The  mayor  of  the  city 
taken  up  last  week  for  cantering  his  horse 
in  the  streets  ;  he  was  taken  up  by  a  truck- 
man." Here  is  evidently  a  fine  democratic 
appreciation  of  the  incident.  That  truck- 
man could  not  be  spared  !  Mayors  them- 
selves must  obey  the  laws  they  enforce  on 
others. 

"Sept.  24,  1824.  This  morning  General 


BIRTH  AND  SCHOOL  LIFE. 


29 


La  Fayette  made  a  most  splendid  entree 
into  this  metropolis."  Boston  had  then 
but  45,000  inhabitants,  but  the  boy's  soul 
swells  with  too  high  civic  pride  to  be  con- 
tent with  a  lesser  name  than  metropolis. 
Thenceforth,  during  all  his  stay,  he  tracks 
the  General  round  to  Commencement  Day 
in  Cambridge,  to  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Day,  to 
Charlestown,  and  wherever  else  he  goes. 

"  October  20,  1824.  When  in  Roxbury, 
I  passed  one  of  the  columns  of  the  bank 
on  its  way  to  the  city;  there  were  thirty- 
four  yoke  of  oxen  tugging  at  it.  They 
went  very  slowly.  Oct.  21.  Cattle  show 
to-day.  The  great  column  reached  State 
Street  at  noon.  Professor  Everett  intro- 
duced four  members  of  the  British  Parlia- 
ment to  the  Latin  School  this  morning." 

"Nov.  8,  1824.  High  fever,  leeches  ap- 
plied at  night,  after  which  I  felt  better  in 
my  head."  Let  this  suffice  as  illustration 
of  his  constitutional  peril,  tendency  to 
brain  congestion,  and  only  to  be  helped 
by  larger  supplies  of  quoit-pitching,  explo- 
ration of  lead  mines,  entrees  of  Marquis 
La  Fayette,  and  mayors  arrested  by  truck- 
men for  cantering  their  horses  on  the  pub- 
lic street. 


30         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

"March  4,  1825.  Inauguration  of  the 
new  President  at  Washington  to-day.  His 
friends  saw  fit  to  make  a  deal  of  racket 
and  to  have  a  great  dinner  at  *  Old  Fun- 
nel,' insomuch  that  the  like  wa's  never 
seen.  Moreover,  in  the  night  time,  the 
men  round  about  made  many  bonfires  and 
destroyed  much  wood  which  had  better 
been  given  to  the  poor.''  Although  the  in- 
genuous boy  had  temporarily  lost  sight  of 
the  context  which  puts  this  scriptural  quo- 
tation into  the  mouth  of  the  Pharisee  de- 
nouncing the  waste  of  the  alabaster  box  of 
precious  perfume,  he  none  the  less  meant 
it  honestly,  as  all  his  future  life  was  to 
show. 

"June  19,  1825.  We  had  a  fine  chance 
of  seeing  the  ceremonies  of  laying  the  cor- 
ner-stone of  a  monument"  (Bunker  Hill) 
"  which  is  to  be  a  memento  of  the  most 
important  battle  to  be  found  on  the  pages 
of  American  history.  .  .  .  After  the  stone 
was  laid,  the  company  adjourned  to  an 
amphitheatre  which  had  been  put  up  for 
the  occasion,  where  Mr.  Webster  delivered 
a  very  eloquent  address.  I  felt  too  hungry 
to  stay  to  hear  it,  especially  as  I  had  no 


BIRTH  AND   SCHOOL  LIFE,  31 

ticket  for  the  great  dinner  which  was  given 
on  the  occasion." 

A  final  extract  from  these  school-day 
journals  may  have  interest  as  illustrating 
the  difference  between  the  examinations 
for  entering  Harvard  in  those  days  and 
the  examinations  of  the  present. 

"Sept.  2,  1825.  The  opening  of  a  new 
chapter  in  my  life!  Bowditch  and  I  (with 
a  raff  of  books)  left  town  about  five  in  the 
morning.  We  reached  Cambridge  after  a 
short  and  chilly  ride,  put  our  horse  up  at 
the  stable,  took  the  proper  books  under  our 
arms,  and  went  to  University  Hall,  where 
(after  waiting  a  few  minutes)  we  were  sep- 
arated into  divisions.  We  were  first  ex- 
amined by  Professor  Farrar  in  Algebra, 
having  delivered  our  letters  to  him.  We 
then  went  to  the  tavern  and  took  breakfast, 
after  which  we  were  examined  by  Mr. 
Channing  in  Sallust,  Professor  Hedge  in 
Cicero,  and  Professor  Folsom  in  writing 
Latin.  We  then  took  dinner.  Next  ex- 
amined by  Dr.  Popkin  in  Greek  grammar, 
Mr.  Hilliard  in  Virgil,  Mr.  Noyes  in  Greek 
prose,  Burnap  in  Greek  poetry,  and  lastly 
by  Dr.  Ware  in   Greek  Testament.     We 


32  CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

finished  at  five  p.  m.  Took  supper  at  half- 
past  six,  and  at  eight  p.  m.  all  assembled 
in  the  yard  before  the  President's  house, 
where  we  waited  an  hour  or  so,  when  the 
first,  second,  and  third  divisions  were 
called  for.  We  groped  our  w^ay  upstairs 
in  'fear  and  trembling,'  and  in  a  moment 
after  stood  in  the  august  presence  of  the 
Faculty  of  Harvard  University.  Bow- 
ditch,  Blake,  and  myself  received  the  wel- 
come answer  that  we  '  entered.'  We 
danced  over  to  the  tavern  with  hearts  as 
light  as  air,  tumbled  into  our  beds,  and 
soon  were  sound  asleep." 


V. 

AT    HARVARD    COLLEGE. 

Young  Barnard's  Harvard  examination, 
described  in  the  last  chapter,  had  been  for 
admission  to  the  sophomore  class,  ill-health 
having  prevented  him  from  presenting 
himself  the  year  before  as  freshman.  The 
journals  are  still  kept  up,  and  with  the 
same  keen  zest  for  recording  every  inci- 
dent with  a  flavor  of  life  in  it.  They 
moreover  show  him  to  have  been  an  om- 
nivorous, though  desultory,  reader  of  trav- 
els, poetry,  essays,  history,  in  truth  of 
everything  of  a  concrete  character,  a  habit 
that  continued  through  life,  whenever  he 
could  procure  leisure  to  indulge  in  it. 
Whatever  seized  hold  of  his  imagination 
in  the  way  of  picture  was  vividly  remem- 
bered, and  ever  after  on  call  in  illustration 
of  any  principle  he  wished  to  light  up. 
At  the  same  time  —  though  there  is  no 
evidence  that  he  shared  any  actual  part  in 


34         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

them  —  he  never  fails  to  take  a  pictur- 
esque interest  in  the  various  escapades  of 
his  fellow-students  in  the  way  of  burning 
tar  barrels,  smashing  tutors'  windows, 
breaking  in  the  doors  of  recitation-rooms, 
and  even  at  times  indulging  in  explosions 
of  gunpowder.  "  The  proper  study  of 
mankind  is  man"  was  always  a  maxim 
with  him. 

For  people  disposed  to  contrast  the 
Golden  Age  of  the  past  with  what  they 
call  the  Bronze  or  the  Iron  Age  of  the 
present,  it  may  be  instructive  to  compare 
the  ways  of  the  Harvard  student  in  1827 
with  those  of  his  grandsons  in  1895.  Only 
a  couple  of  years  ago,  and  most  rightly,  a 
hue  and  cry  was  raised  in  the  public  press 
over  the  barbarity  of  the  initiation  prac- 
tices in  vogue,  on  the  reception  of  new 
members  into  certain  of  the  college  socie- 
ties. How  much  did  they  differ  for  the 
worse  from  what  follows  ? 

"Feb.  2"],  1827.  In  the  evening  I  at- 
tended a  very  interesting  meeting  of  the 
Euphrodians.  It  conferred  an  honorary 
degree  upon  a  Dutchman,  —  in  sport  of 
course.      He   took   it   all    in  earnest  and 


AT  HARVARD   COLLEGE.  35 

thanked  us  very  politely  for  the  honor  we 
had  shown  him.  Poor  fellow,  he  knows 
little  of  the  Yankees.  This  Dutchman, 
by  name  Van  Beerenstyn,  has  been  in 
Cambridge  some  time,  during  which  he 
has  contrived  to  get  acquainted  with  sev- 
eral students.  Being  in  one  of  the  stu- 
dents' rooms,  he  was  persuaded  to  send  a 
challenge  to  Mr.  Baci,  the  Italian  tutor, 
with  whom  he  happened  to  be  offended. 
In  a  few  minutes  the  challenge  was  re- 
turned accepted.  Mr.  Van  then  began  to 
shake,  but  by  dint  of  much  persuasion  was 
finally  brought  to  the  fatal  spot.  All  pre- 
liminaries being  settled,  his  antagonist 
fired  first,  but  without  success.  Full  of 
hope,  the  Dutchman  raised  his  hand,  drew 
the  trigger,  and  down  dropped  Baci.  The 
victor  took  to  his  heels  without  delay. 
However,  he  was  soon  overtaken  by  a  con- 
stable with  his  writ,  who  kept  him  in  dur- 
ance vile  until  bonds  were  given  for  his 
appearance  in  court.  For  the  information 
of  those  who  never  went  to  college,  I  will 
add  that  the  constable  and  Baci  were  per- 
sonated by  students.  The  poor  fellow 
was  so  alarmed  that  early  this  morning  he 


36         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

walked  across  the  fields  to  avoid  arrest. 
Being  very  anxious  to  obtain  his  diploma, 
he  came  out  after  dark  disguised  in  a 
white  coat  and  green  specs.  I  think  the 
joke  was  carried  too  far  and  became  no 
joke  at  all." 

"Oct.  25,  1827.  Tar  barrel  in  college 
yard  this  evening.  I  heard  that  it  was  to 
take  place,  and  was  over  in  Holworthy  to 
see.  Passed  a  couple  of  hours  in  Rogers' 
room,  laughing  till  my  sides  ached.  By 
the  way,  I  admire  to  laugh." 

As  bringing  out  the  more  serious  side  of 
young  Barnard's  character,  the  succeeding 
extract  from  these  journals  will  suffice  :  — 

"  October  i,  1827.  Walked  up  to  the 
Botanic  Garden  with  Rogers  and  Bow- 
ditch.  There  was  a  fine  display  of  fall 
flowers,  whose  deep  rich  colors  I  always 
prefer  to  the  gaudy  tints  of  spring  and 
summer.  It  seems  as  though  Nature  put 
forth  all  her  splendor  to  grace  her  depart- 
ure, and,  joining  to  her  glory  all  that  can 
remind  man  of  his  frailty,  appears  to  tell 
us  plainly  he  must  die,  —  must  be  forgot- 
ten, —  but  stop  and  think  before  you  write 
that  word !  " 


AT  HARVARD   COLLEGE.  37 

As  already  has  been  stated,  the  real  in- 
terest of  young  Barnard's  mind  centred 
rather  in  reading  of  a  multifarious  charac- 
ter than  in  his  regular  class  studies.  Fre- 
quent entries  in  his  journals  bear  witness 
to  this.  "  To-day  began  Tasso's  '  Jerusa- 
lem Delivered.' "  "  Finished  my  labors 
with  Botta.  Taking  copious  notes,  I  ren- 
dered it  quite  a  task,  a  long  but  not  un- 
pleasant one."  "  To-day  Disraeli's  '  Curi- 
osities of  Literature.'  "  "  Read  '  Lalla 
Rookh,'  one  of  the  most  beautiful  poems 
I  ever  came  across."     "March  19.     Read 

*  Martinus  Scriblerus,'  Byron's  '  Cain,'  and 
part  of  '  Sardanapalus.'  "  "  Finished  Con- 
greve's  works  to-day,  his  comedy  of  the 

*  Double  Dealer '  most  capital ;  began  on 
a  translation  of  Goethe's  '  Wilhelm  Meis- 
ter,'  also  Middleton's  '  Life  of  Cicero.' " 
"  Finished  Bacon's  '  Advancement  of 
Learning,'  rich  in  philosophy  and  gilded 
thick  with  capital  quotations."  To  so 
varied  a  literary  bill  of  fare  was  added  the 
careful  reading  from  beginning  to  end  of 
such  voluminous  histories  as  Gibbon's 
"  Decline  and  Fall,"  Hallam's  "  Middle 
Ages,"  and   Mitford's  "  Greece,"  while  to 


38         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

books  of  purely  abstract  thought  there  is 
scarcely  a  reference. 

Spite  of  the  fact,  however,  that  the  reg- 
ular curriculum  took  far  less  hold  on  his 
mind  than  haphazard  reading  of  what- 
ever illustrated  human  life,  young  Barnard 
maintained  a  good  standing  in  his  class 
and  graduated  with  honors.  It  was  a  class 
later  to  be  distinguished  by  such  reputa- 
tions as  those  of  Robert  C.  Winthrop, 
George  S.  Hillard,  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes,  Thomas  B.  Fox,  Henry  I.  Bow- 
ditch,  and  James  Freeman  Clarke,  all  of 
whom  through  years  to  come  were  to  ren- 
der hearty  and  efficient  service  to  their 
friend  in  his  philanthropic  work. 


VI. 

IN    THE    DIVINITY    SCHOOL. 

"  I  HAVE  now  taken  up  my  residence  at 
Cambridge,  to  pursue  a  course  of  studies 
that  shall  in  part  fit  me  for  the  duties  of  a 
Christian  instructor,  —  in  part,  I  say.  .  .  . 
May  the  God  of  all  grace  so  favor  the 
means,  to  which  I  am  about  applying  my- 
self, that  I  may  become  a  blessing  to  my 
friends  and  a  benefit  to  my  fellow-men." 
So  begins,  September  7,  1828,  the  new 
journal. 

Eminently  characteristic  of  the  young 
man  was  the  "  in  part,  I  say."  For  minute 
textual  criticism,  proofs  of  the  being  and 
attributes  of  God,  systematic  bodies  of 
divinity,  he  cherished  but  a  traditional 
respect,  and  not  very  much  even  of  that. 
As  to  prolix  discussions  of  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  Gospels,  they  were,  in  the  only 
sense  in  which  he  cared  for  the  word,  so 
uniquely  genuine  in  life   and   spirit,  that 


40         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

doubtless  he  would  have  replied  as  did 
George  III.  to  Bishop  Sherlock,  on  the 
presentation  of  his  "Apology  for  Chris- 
tianity," "  Why,  God  bless  my  soul,  I  did 
not  know  before  it  needed  to  be  apolo- 
gized for."  All  this  in  no  spirit  of  dero- 
gation from  the  real  value  of  such  studies, 
but  only  in  witness  that  here  was  a  youth 
of  such  fervid  humanity  and  glowing 
piety  that  the  simple  vision  of  the  beauty 
and  joy  of  a  kingdom  of  God  on  earth,  as 
Jesus  flashed  it  forth,  set  him  all  aflame. 
He  wanted,  indeed,  to  go  through  the 
Divinity  School,  but  very  much  for  the 
same  reasons  that  actuate  certain  medical 
students  in  going  through  the  Medical 
School,  namely,  to  get  into  position  to 
try  what  is  theoretically  taught  there  on 
actual  typhus  and  smallpox.  Accordingly, 
one  of  the  first  entries  in  the  new  journal 
runs  as  follows  :  "  Read  a  fine  tract  called 
'  The  Final  Tendency  of  Religious  Con- 
troversy.' I  never  was  much  inclined  to 
religious  disputes.  Religious  disputes ! 
what  a  phrase.  Professor  Norton  has 
written  a  book  in  favor  of  controversy, 
which  Fox  says  I  ought  to  read.     I  mean 


IN  THE   DIVINITY  SCHOOL.  41 

to,  but  I  dare  to  think  the  professor  will 
not  convert  me." 

The  miscellaneous  reading  still  went  on, 
but  now  more  on  lines  of  whatever  in 
the  manners  and  customs  of  men,  particu- 
larly in  the  Orient,  would  help  to  make 
the  gospel  story  more  vivid  to  imagina- 
tion. Reading  and  study  alike,  however, 
were  perpetually  broken  in  upon  by  excur- 
sions into  the  living  world  of  the  day,  to 
see  for  himself  what  was  going  on  for  the 
practical  relief  of  misery  or  for  the  uplift- 
ing of  the  degraded.  As  an  example  of 
this,  let  the  following  extract  serve  :  "  I 
passed  the  remainder  of  the  day  with  G. 
Haskins,  who  has  been  appointed  chap- 
lain of  the  House  of  Industry.  Saw  the 
female  inmates  at  their  dinner.  I  had 
thought  such  faces  and  such  forms  dwelt 
only  in  the  imagination  of  Cruikshank,  but 
there  they  were,  living,  moving,  and  eating 
rice  pudding.  It  being  late  and  rainy,  I 
concluded  to  stay  till  the  morrow  with 
him.  I  woke  several  times  during  the 
night,  and,  in  spite  of  the  toothache, 
laughed  heartily  at  the  idea  of  sleeping 
in  an  almshouse,  —  the  which  oddity,  how- 
ever, may  again  occur." 


42         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

During  his  three  years'  stay  in  the  Cam- 
bridge Divinity  School,  a  philanthropic 
society  was  formed  among  the  students, 
of  which  young  Barnard  w^as  the  most 
active  spirit.  On  all  sides,  signs  were 
manifest  of  a  resolute  determination  to 
make  practical  application  to  the  worst 
evils  of  society  of  the  sublime  visions  of 
the  future  of  humanity,  with  which  the 
preaching  of  Dr.  Channing  had  inflamed 
so  many  minds.  In  those  days,  Dr.  Chan- 
ning stood  forth  clad  in  the  robes  of  in- 
spirer  and  prophet.  Through  the  lumi- 
nous beauty  of  his  eyes  shone  the  light 
and  through  the  tones  of  his  voice  thrilled 
the  emotions  that  revealed  a  diviner  realm 
of  life  to  others.  But  frail  in  health,  and 
with  a  body  so  etherealized  as  to  "  serve 
but  as  a  pretext  for  keeping  his  soul  a 
little  longer  on  earth,"  he  was  incapable 
of  the  physical  strain  involved  in  flinging 
himself  against  the  hard  realities  and  into 
the  rough  and  tumble  melee  of  practical 
philanthropic  work.  Nor  was  this  called 
for,  more  than  for  the  captain  of  the  ship 
to  desert  his  charts  and  sextant,  or  the 
steersman  his  compass  and  wheel,  to  brace 


IN  THE  DIVINITY  SCHOOL.  43 

the  halliards.  Hundreds  of  physically 
tougher  men  and  women,  of  men  and  wo- 
men organized  by  nature  for  the  active 
rather  than  the  contemplative  life,  were 
getting  ready  to  come  to  close  quarters 
with  drunkenness,  slavery,  pauperism,  in- 
sanity, and  to  try  to  make  the  blind  see, 
the  dumb  speak,  and  the  lame  walk.  Chan- 
ning's  part  was  it  to  supply  the  vision  and 
the  sacred  passion. 

Already  now  was  Dr.  Tuckerman  en- 
grossed body  and  soul  in  the  work  of  car- 
rying into  the  slums  of  the  city  this  high 
religious  idealism.  Quite  as  eagerly,  too, 
was  he  on  the  lookout  for  young  men 
cordially  sympathetic  with  his  own  high- 
wrought  sense  of  the  privilege  of  dedi- 
cating their  lives  to  such  a  service. 

Certainly,  the  last  thing  young  Barnard 
was  looking  forward  to  was  a  pulpit  in 
a  city  church,  or  indeed  in  any  church, 
where  he  should  minister  simply  to  the 
well-to-do.  It  was  to  the  disinherited  he 
felt  a  call  to  minister,  and  especiall}^  as  al- 
ready he  was  beginning  to  feel,  to  disin- 
herited children  exposed  to  every  form  of 
the  worst  temptation.     Instinctive  as  his 


44         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

love  of  birds  was  his  love  of  children,  his 
yearning,  too,  to  fling  wide  the  doors  of 
the  imprisoning  cages  of  narrow  dogma 
and  harsh  discipline,  and  set  them  free  to 
wing  it  under  the  blue  sky  and  warm  sun- 
shine, heirs  of  all  the  beauty  of  the  world. 
"  I  have  often  thought,"  he  breaks  out  in 
his  journal,  "that  there  would  be  few  things 
more  delightful  than  to  take  a  young  child 
and  open  to  his  mind  the  glorious  truths 
of  Christianity.  Philosophers  have  longed 
to  watch  the  breaking  of  natural  light  upon 
an  eye  reclaimed  from  blindness,  but  the 
experiment  is  naught,  compared  to  the  un- 
folding of  Christianity  to  a  living  soul." 

Truer  words  of  self-criticism  were  never 
written  than  these.  Throughout  life  their 
writer  felt  the  same  enthusiastic  delight  in 
cultivating  the  child-soul  as  the  horticul- 
turist in  cultivating  roses  and  lilies.  Not 
a  question  of  soil,  temperature,  sunshine, 
moisture,  protection  from  frost,  insect,  and 
blight,  but  was  as  vital  to  the  one  as  the 
other.  True,  the  word  "environment"  had 
not  yet  been  invented  in  those  early  days, 
at  least  in  the  technical  sense  in  which 
it  has  been  so   perpetually,  and  perhaps 


IN  THE  DIVINITY  SCHOOL. 

wearisomely,  used  since  the  publication  of 
Darwin's  "  Origin  of  Species."  But  no 
more  than  Darwin  did  young  Barnard  be- 
lieve in  the  old-fashioned  idea  of  the  per- 
manence and  immutability  of  species, — 
most  especially  in  the  permanence  and 
immutability  of  the  species  bad  boy  as  ver- 
sus the  species  good  boy.  In  the  whole 
controversy  between  the  champions  of 
inherited  and  the  champions  of  acquired 
characteristics,  as  determinative  of  char- 
acter, he  took  sides  emphatically  with  the 
latter.  The  influences  emanating  from 
one's  habitual  surroundings,  these,  he  felt, 
are  the  magic  forces  that  shape  him ;  and 
the  glory  of  human  effort  and  the  pledge 
of  its  ultimate  triumphant  success  lie  in 
the  transcendent  variety  and  richness  of 
the  means  put  at  man's  command  —  if 
only  he  will  see  and  use  them  —  for  cre- 
ating a  new  environment.  All  this  stood 
out  as  clearly  before  the  mind  of  the  young 
man,  as  in  matters  of  physical  health  be- 
fore that  of  the  physician  when  he  sends 
away  a  puny,  emaciated  child  from  the  con- 
finement of  the  hot  city  to  breathe  in  the 
iodine  of  the  seashore  or  the  balsam  of  the 
pine-clad  mountain  top. 


VII. 

ORDINATION. 

On  completing  his  course,  September, 
1 83 1,  in  the  Cambridge  Divinity  School, 
the  magnet  that  proved  strongest  in  at- 
traction for  Charles  F.  Barnard  was,  as 
already  has  been  stated.  Dr.  Joseph  Tuck- 
erman,  whom  he  now  began  to  accompany 
in  his  daily  rounds  through  the  worse 
quarters  of  the  city.  Under  these  circum- 
stances was  it  that  occurred  the  short  but 
decisive  interchange  quoted  farther  back: 
"  *  If,'  cried  I,  *  these  are  your  flock  and 
that  is  your  chapel,  let  me  be  your  help- 
meet ! '  '  For  life  ? '  asked  he.  '  For  life ! ' 
added  I.'  "  Already  had  two  other  devoted 
young  men,  Frederick  T.  Gray  and  Robert 
C.  Waterston,  associated  themselves  with 
the  veteran  pioneer.  The  charge  of  the 
poor  of  the  city  was  now  to  be  divided 
among  the  four,  in  the  resolve  that,  God 
helping  them,  ignorance,  disease,  pauper- 


ORDINATION.  47 

ism,  and  irreligion  should  be  abolished. 
With  no  less  fervid  hope  than  this  was  the 
work  begun. 

Not  until  November  2,  1834,  was  it,  how- 
ever, that,  adequate  trial  having  been  made 
and  measures  matured  by  the  Fraternity  of 
Churches,  actual  ordination  to  the  minis- 
try at  large  was  conferred  on  two  of  these 
young  men,  Charles  F.  Barnard  and  Fred- 
erick T.  Gray.  The  service  took  place  in 
the  presence  of  a  crowded  congregation 
in  Federal  Street  Church,  Dr.  Tuckerman 
preaching  the  sermon,  and  the  charge  be- 
ing given  by  Dr.  Channing.  Here  was  a 
work  that  lay  very  close  to  Dr.  Channing's 
heart.  Not  his,  the  too  common  feeling 
that  in  the  ministry  to  the  poor  and  igno- 
rant no  especial  mental  ability  is  called  for, 
or  that  tinsel  rhetoric  and  plenty  of  super- 
stition will  prove  far  more  congenial  than 
clear  reason  and  high  feeling.  In  ^F^sop's 
Fables,  which  every  child  could  enjoy  and 
yet  feel  the  depths  of.  Dr.  Channing  recog- 
nized as  great  an  exercise  of  intellectual 
insight  as  in  many  a  lofty  tragedy  or  pro- 
found treatise  of  philosophy.  To  him  the 
simple  parables  of   Jesus  were  as  imme- 


48         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

diate  a  divine  creative  act  as  the  lilies  of 
the  field  or  the  birds  of  the  air  they  illus- 
trated and  glorified.  Therefore  was  it  that 
he  charged  so  emphatically  the  young  men 
before  him  never  for  an  instant  to  confuse 
simplicity  with  shallowness  of  thought,  or 
to  give  in  to  the  idea  that  all  that  was 
expected  of  them  was  commonplace  nutri- 
ment for  commonplace  minds. 

"  We  charge  you,  my  friends,"  Dr. 
Channing  urged,  "  to  beware  of  this  com- 
mon error.  Do  not  dishonor  your  high 
calling  by  supposing  it  to  require  little 
force  of  thought  and  feeling.  The  poor 
are  generally  ignorant,  but  in  some  re- 
spects they  are  better  critics  than  the  rich, 
and  make  greater  demands  on  their  teach- 
ers. They  can  only  be  brought  and  held 
together  by  a  preaching  which  fastens 
their  attention,  or  pierces  their  consciences, 
or  moves  their  hearts.  They  are  no  critics 
of  words,  but  they  know  when  they  are 
touched  or  roused,  and  by  this  test,  a  far 
truer  one  than  you  find  in  fastidious  con- 
gregations, they  judge  the  minister  and 
determine  whether  to  follow  or  forsake 
him. 


ORDINATION.  49 

"  Their  minister  must  reach  the  under- 
standing through  the  imagination  and  the 
heart.  He  must  appeal  to  the  simple,  uni- 
versal principles  of  human  nature.  .  .  . 
Take  your  texts,  as  your  Master  did,  from 
scenes,  events,  objects,  which  are  pressing 
on  the  notice  of  your  hearers.  Better  for- 
sake your  ministry  than  make  it  a  monot- 
onous repetition  of  the  common  modes  of 
teaching  and  action. 

"  You  must  not  wait  for  the  poor  in  the 
church.  Go  to  them  in  their  houses.  Go 
where  no  others  will  go.  .  .  .  Feel  an 
attraction  in  what  others  shun,  in  the 
bleak  room  open  to  the  winter's  wind,  in 
the  wasted  form  and  the  haggard  counte- 
nance, in  the  very  degradation  of  your  race. 
.  .  .  You  will  be  told  to  arm  yourself  with 
caution,  to  beware  of  deception,  and  the 
lesson  is  important ;  but  prudence  and 
caution  are  only  defensive  armor.  They 
will  be  security  to  yourselves;  they  give 
no  power  over  misery,  poverty,  and  vice. 
.  .  .  The  only  power  to  oppose  to  evil  is 
love,  strong,  enduring  love,  a  benevolence 
which  no  crime  or  wretchedness  can  con- 
quer, and  which  therefore  can  conquer  all. 


50         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

.  .  .  Do  not  go  to  the  poor  as  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  richer  classes,  to  keep 
them  in  order;  but  go,  in  the  name  of 
Christians,  to  make  them  partakers  of  the 
highest  distinctions  and  blessings  in  which 
any  of  us  rejoice." 

It  was  a  high  commission  that  was 
lifted  up  before  the  eyes  of  the  young  man 
in  these  words  of  Dr.  Channing,  and  fully 
did  his  heart  respond  to  them.  The  ser- 
vice, however,  stood  to  him  personally  but 
as  an  anointing,  in  the  presence  of  a  sol- 
emn assemblage,  to  a  work  to  which  he 
was  already  consecrated  heart  and  soul. 
Perhaps  the  deepest  significance  of  all  lay 
in  the  crowded  congregation,  and  in  the 
firm  persuasion  that  it  was  made  up  of  so 
many  noble  men  and  women  ready  to  co- 
operate in  patient,  self-denying,  year-long 
toil  in  the  blessed  cause.  Apart  from 
them,  how  little  could  have  been  expected. 
But  there  they  were,  asking  only  for  an 
inspiring  leader,  to  be  swift  with  a  gener- 
ous response. 


VIII. 

BRIEF    MARRIED    LIFE. 

As  already  said,  Charles  F.  Barnard  for 
eighteen  months  previous  to  his  ordina- 
tion had  been  embarked  on  the  full  tide 
of  work.  The  city  had  granted  him  the 
use  of  Ward  Room  No.  ii,  to  be  used  in 
his  service  as  minister  at  large,  and  had 
made  him  a  director  in  the  House  of  In- 
dustry. He  kept  incessantly  engaged  in 
visiting  the  poor  and  studying  their  needs, 
in  consoling  them  in  their  sorrows  and 
counseling  them  in  their  difficulties.  How 
happy  he  was  in  these  rounds  of  grate- 
ful duty  finds  constant  expression  in  his 
journals. 

"  The  little  tots  at  South  Boston  came 
running  to  me,  calling  me  by  name.  I 
could  not  but  feel  for  them,  the  lone  or- 
phans in  a  poorhouse.  I  smiled  on  them 
and  patted  their  cheeks.  As  I  left  the 
room,  I  turned  round  and  saw  them  all 


52  CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

running  about  and  saying,  '  Oh,  he  likes 
me ! '  and  '  He  likes  me ! '  and  '  He  likes 
me  too ! ' 

"  Saw  old  Mrs.  Cook  again.  It  always 
does  me  good  to  see  her,  —  so  poor  and 
feeble,  and  yet  so  happy  and  trustful.  '  I 
want  nothing  now,'  said  she,  'but  good- 
ness, and  I  shall  never  say  I  don't  want 
that'  It  seems  sometimes  that  if  we  could 
only  once  get  people  into  the  field,  they 
would  all  be  ministers  at  large.  Is  it  not 
meant  that  they  should  be }  " 

To  crown  his  happiness,  he  had  for  some 
time  been  engaged  to  a  young  woman  of 
rare  ideality  of  character,  who  entered  with 
enthusiasm  into  all  his  hopes  and  schemes, 
—  Miss  Adeline  M.  Russell.  Their  house 
at  No.  686  Washington  Street  had  been 
made  ready  for  them,  and  a  week  after  the 
ordination.  May  26,  1834,  they  were  mar- 
ried, and  there  set  up  their  home.  "  I  feel 
now  the  whole  of  life's  great  mystery,"  he 
writes ;  "  I  am  conscious  of  the  full  pulse 
of  true  existence."  But  before  a  month 
had  passed  she  was  lying  dead,  and  he 
was  left  alone. 

To  a  man  of  such  emotional  intensity, 


BRIEF  MARRIED  LIFE.  53 

the  shock  was  terrible.  He  sought  relief 
by  devoting  himself  in  an  even  more  con- 
secrated spirit  to  his  work,  and  by  seeking 
forgetfulness  of  his  private  sorrow  in  the 
vast  sorrow  of  the  world.  It  is  the  bless- 
edness of  natures  so  full  of  love  as  his, 
and  in  which  love  supplies  rich  material  of 
vision  to  imagination,  that  under  its  spell 
the  sharpest  woes  of  life  become  transfig- 
ured. The  exaltation  he  always  experi- 
enced in  the  presence  of  nature  and  the 
imagery  it  supplied  for  vivid  conceptions 
of  the  yearned-for  heaven  now  came  to  his 
relief  with  a  power  he  never  felt  before. 
It  was,  then,  in  a  strain  of  religious  feel- 
ing like  this  which  follows  that  he  could, 
later  on,  write  of  a  visit  to  the  seashore  at 
Cohasset. 

"How  much  they  lose  who  lose  the 
majesty  of  night.  We  had  first  a  fine  sun- 
set, followed  by  a  broad  pink  column  of 
zodiacal  light.  Star  after  star  was  lit  up 
to  gem  the  vault  of  the  great  temple,  and 
the  Milky  Way  was  flowing  from  north  to 
south  as  a  wreath  of  incense.  The  mete- 
ors dropped  through  our  atmosphere  as 
from  another  world.    The  Northern  Lights 


54         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

continued  very  bright,  now  burning  in 
brilliant  spots,  now  streaming  as  vast  organ 
pipes  into  the  upper  air.  The  east  grew 
brighter  and  brighter,  the  moon  rose  slowly 
and  threw  her  chaste  light  upon  all  around 
us.  How  full  the  murmur  of  the  ocean 
was  of  her  I  Such  things  fill  my  life  with 
solemn  pleasure.  I  can  sit  on  the  sand 
and  enjoy  our  life  of  love  over  again,  while 
the  power  of  God  moves  before  me  on  the 
waters,  and  eternal  life  is  echoed  in  their 
incessant  beat." 


IX. 

THE   children's   CHURCH. 

Familiar  enough  is  the  pathetic  con- 
fession of  Martin  Luther's  Hfe-long  friend 
and  co-worker,  PhiHp  Melancthon,  of  the 
pain  that  struck  home  to  his  heart  when 
on  going  forth,  his  soul  aflame  with  the 
"  glad  tidings  of  great  joy  "  he  longed  to 
proclaim  to  his  fellow-men,  he  was  met  by 
them  with  apathy  or  disdain.  Yet  it  is 
a  confession  repeating  itself  in  every  fresh 
generation.  Short  and  terse  was  the 
phrase  in  which  the  disheartened  preacher 
summed  it  up  :  "I  found  that  Old  Adam 
was  too  strong  for  young  Melancthon ; " 
but  it  stood  for  the  all  of  the  inevitable 
moral  shock  involved  in  the  first  encounter 
of  a  mind,  nurtured  on  the  highest  aspi- 
rations and  most  radiant  hopes  of  elect 
spirits,  with  the  accumulated  evils,  brutali- 
ties, and  deceits  ingrained  in  the  lower 
strata  of  society. 


56         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

In  all  such  high -wrought  idealism  as 
that  of  Dr.  Charming  there  lies  a  peril,  as 
well  as  an  inspiration,  to  the  ardent  hearer. 
Such  a  preacher  "knows  man,  but  not 
men,"  knows  the  divine  element  in  human 
nature,  but  not  its  animalism  and  moral 
degradation.  He  sees  visions  and  he 
dreams  dreams.  So  ravishing  are  they, 
such  an  opening  wide  of  the  gates  into  a 
visible  heaven,  that  fired  with  their  spirit- 
ual beauty,  kindred  minds  believe  for  the 
hour  that  they  need  only  go  forth  to  pro- 
claim them,  and  forthwith  the  new  revela- 
tion will  be  greeted  with  thanksgiving  on 
every  hand.  Many  the  impulsive  spirits 
that  listen  with  gladness  to  such  strains 
as  Channing's,  and  then  seeking  to  bring 
them  home  in  all  their  glory  to  fighting 
Tom,  and  drunken  Mary,  and  lying  Bill, 
"  immediately  are  offended,  and  having  no 
root  in  themselves,  endure  but  for  a  while 
and  then  wither  away." 

This  was  the  trial  now  before  young 
Barnard.  His  heart  was  bruised  and  sore 
over  his  own  personal  affliction,  and  yet 
comforted  and  uplifted  by  exalted  religious 
faith.     It  was  not  suffering,  but  unsolaced 


THE  CHILDREN'S  CHURCH.  57 

suffering,  that  seemed  to  him  the  burden 
of  humanity ;  and  so  he  set  to  work  with 
renewed  consecration,  able  at  last,  he  felt, 
to  speak  as  one  having  authority  through 
his  own  baptism  of  pain.  But  now  in  his 
letters  and  journals  occurs  many  a  passage 
of  deep  inward  depression. 

"  I  meet,"  he  writes  a  friend,  "  with  con- 
tinual disappointment  among  the  objects 
of  my  ministry.  They  deceive  me  in  every 
point  to  get  assistance  from  me,  and,  worse 
than  all,  they  lead  me  into  false  hopes  as 
to  their  moral  and  spiritual  advancement. 
But  I  feel  that  insensibly  I  am  getting 
used  to  it,  and  that  it  is  leading  me  to 
read  better  and  hold  faster  the  great  rules 
of  prudence  and  caution.  I  am  getting  to 
be  more  distrustful  of  myself,  —  my  feel- 
ings,—  the  appearances  of  things,  —  and 
feel  that  I  must  use  all  means,  the  most 
humble  and  the  most  remote,  of  ascertain- 
ing the  true  character  and  the  real  claims 
of  those  who  may  apply  to  me,  —  thus 
making  human  nature,  under  its  various 
phases,  the  study  of  my  life.  Meanwhile 
I  keep,  or  try  to  keep,  always  at  work, 
instant  in  season  and  out  of  season,  from 


58         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

the  firm  belief  that  such  is  my  positive 
duty,  and  that  such  a  course  of  untiring 
exertion  is  absolutely  required  of  me  by 
my  Heavenly  Father." 

More  and  more  evident  was  it  becom- 
ing that  his  interest  in  his  work  was  in- 
creasingly centring  in  neglected  children. 
His  own  was  preeminently  a  child  nature, 
impulsive,  enthusiastic,  spontaneous,  open- 
eyed  with  wonder  as  in  a  new  world.  For 
an  efficient  worker  among  a  population  of 
ignorant  and  degraded  adults,  a  man  really 
needs  in  his  make-up  a  rare  and  subtle 
combination  of  the  detective  and  the  saint. 
But  of  the  detective  there  was  little  or 
nothing  in  Mr.  Barnard.  Impulsive  be- 
nevolence ran  away  with  him,  and  he  was 
easily  imposed  on.  To  spend  day  after 
day  like  a  consecrated  ferret,  tracking  out 
all  the  intricate  windings  in  the  rat-holes 
of  deceit,  was  utterly  repulsive  to  him,  and 
would  have  left  him  little  wiser  in  the  end 
than  when  he  set  out.  But  with  children 
he  was  at  home.  He  could  make  them 
happy.  He  could  win  their  love.  He 
could  open  up  to  them  a  new  world  of 
life  and  beauty.     Even  in  his  own  sorrow, 


THE  CHILDREN'S  CHURCH.  59 

he  found  them  his  best  consolers.  "  I  can 
hardly  tell  you,"  he  writes  his  friend 
Thomas  B.  Fox,  "  how  much  of  my  com- 
fort has  sprung  from  my  children  of  the 
Sunday-school  and  chapel.  You  saw  their 
tears.  I  have  felt  all  their  deep,  lively 
interest  betrayed  in  every  look  and  act 
toward  me.  I  have  almost  wept  for  joy  in 
the  streets  on  noticing  their  manner  of  ap- 
proaching me,  on  hearing  the  sweet  tones 
of  their  voices  subdued  and  mellowed  to 
the  accents  of  truest  affection." 

Already,  as  far  back  as  November  11, 
1832,  the  beginning  had  been  made  in  the 
parlors  of  Miss  Dorothea  L.  Dix  —  later 
the  devoted  benefactor  of  the  insane  —  of 
a  movement  that  was  destined  to  grow 
into  a  veritable  "  Children's  Church,"  — 
original  and  unique  in  character,  pregnant 
with  far-reaching  results.  It  started  with 
a  class  of  three  pupils  seated  on  a  little 
green  bench,  which  is  now  kept  in  War- 
ren Street  Chapel  as  a  historic  memorial 
of  the  Child  Hegira.  Before  a  month  had 
passed,  so  rapidly  had  the  numbers  in- 
creased that  Miss  Dix's  parlors  would  no 
longer   hold   them.     While    there,   all  by 


6o         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

themselves,  Mr.  Barnard  had  been  able  to 
make  the  service  replete  with  interest  and 
charm  to  the  children.  Now,  however, 
for  lack  of  ample  quarters,  he  was  forced 
to  unite  his  school  to  that  of  Rev.  John 
Pierpont  in  the  Hollis  Street  Church,  "  he 
assuming  the  office  of  minister  to  the  chil- 
dren for  a  special  service,  but  agreeing 
that  they  should  likewise  attend  the  regu- 
lar ministration  to  the  adults." 

Of  course,  to  a  staid,  old-fashioned  con- 
gregation like  that  of  Dr.  Pierpont,  there 
were  features  in  this  new  departure  which 
seemed  closely  allied  to  "  an  irruption  of 
the  barbarians,"  —  and  not  unnaturally. 
Seats  were  assigned  the  children  in  the 
gallery  during  the  church  service,  and  it 
was  complained  that  the  tattoo  of  their 
heels  on  the  pew-boards  seriously  disturbed 
the  devotions  of  the  worshipers.  More- 
over, when  an  actual  transfer  of  the  dis- 
turbers to  the  vestry  for  a  service  of  their 
own  was  decided  on,  still  the  arrival  and 
departure  of  the  pupils,  together  with  the 
sound  of  their  singing,  were  inevitable 
sources  of  annoyance. 

Upon  Mr.  Barnard's  mind,  on  the  other 


THE  CHILDREN'S  CHURCH.  6l 

hand,  that  tattoo  of  heels  on  the  pew- 
boards  acted  as  inspiringly  as  the  beat- 
ing of  the  morning  reveille  drums  on  the 
sleeping  soldiery.  It  was  simply  an  em- 
phatic proclamation  of  nature  that  preach- 
ing so  admirably  adapted  as  Dr.  Pierpont's 
to  thoughtful  adults  was  pure  torment  to 
children.  Their  heels  went  because  their 
abounding  nervous  forces,  concentrated 
neither  in  mind  nor  heart,  must  work  off 
at  the  extremities.  Strict  justice  compels 
one  to  say  that  here  was  a  case  in  which 
"  Wisdom  was  justified  in  both  her  chil- 
dren," —  in  Dr.  Pierpont's  congregation  in 
devoutly  wishing  to  get  rid  of  so  much 
racket,  and  in  Mr.  Barnard's  reacting  con- 
viction that  a  new  and  decided  step  must 
be  taken  in  the  religious  nurture  of  chil- 
dren. Meanwhile,  as  a  makeshift  till  some- 
thing better  could  be  done,  a  rather  dismal 
hall  over  the  old  engine  house  in  Common 
Street,  where  the  Brimmer  schoolhouse 
now  stands,  was  occupied  for  about  a 
year. 

Already,  into  the  "Children's  Church" 
established  in  the  Hollis  Street  Vestry,  had 
Mr.    Barnard   succeeded    in   bringing   to- 


62         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

gether  no  less  than  two  hundred  and  fifty 
boys  and  girls,  a  part  of  them  regularly 
connected  with  Dr.  Pierpont's  society,  and 
the  rest  personally  attracted  to  him  in  the 
course  of  his  work  of  ministering  to  the 
poor  in  the  lanes  and  cellars  of  the  city. 
From  the  start  he  had  showed  a  happy 
faculty  for  "getting  in  "  with  street  boys. 
Though  grave  in  aspect,  tall  and  angular 
in  stature,  and  with  a  voice  and  manner 
rather  blunt  than  sentimental,  not  at  all 
the  typical  St.  Vincent  de  Paul  of  the  Ital- 
ian pictures,  yet  children  never  for  an  in- 
stant mistook  his  hearty,  human  nature 
for  the  pious  disguise  of  an  atrabilious 
minister,  surreptitiously  bent  on  decoying 
them  in  to  a  festival  of  dreary  catechisms 
or  spectral  tracts.  Out  of  the  grave  face 
would  soon  leap  a  smile  and  out  of  the  set 
lips  a  jest,  all  the  more  attractive  for  a 
something  behind  them  that  commanded 
respect.  Abruptly  would  he  stop  on  the 
street  before  a  group  of  boys  pitching  cop- 
pers and,  instead  of  asking  them  if  they 
"  knew  where  they  would  be  sure  to  go  to," 
should  they  continue  such  sinful  practices, 
manifest  a  thoroughly  human   interest  in 


THE   CHILDREN'S  CHURCH.  63 

the  game.  Then  by  degrees  he  would  ask 
them  whether  they  had  ever  seen  the  old 
elm  in  Cambridge  under  which  Washing- 
ton first  drew  his  sword ;  or,  if  he  ques- 
tioned them  as  to  the  books  they  read,  be 
much  more  apt  to  dilate  with  rapture  on 
the  pleasure  to  be  derived  from  the  "  Ara- 
bian Nights  "  than  from  "  Harvey's  Medi- 
tations among  the  Tombs."  Step  by  step 
he  thus  drew  them  on  to  hear  him  talk 
about  his  chapel,  where  there  were  nice 
books  to  read,  and  from  wWch  went  out 
chestnuting  many  a  merry  party,  or  on 
excursions  down  the  harbor ;  the  now  at- 
tractive discourse  terminating  with  a  hearty 
invitation  that  they  should  come  round 
next  Sunday  morning  and  try  for  them- 
selves how  they  liked  it.  Many  and  many 
the  boy  or  girl  who  was  thus  skillfully 
hooked ;  while  proselytes  in  plenty  were 
tolled  in  through  the  enthusiastic  way  in 
which  the  praises  of  the  chapel  were  sung 
by  the  children  who,  in  their  own  slang, 
had  "  sampled  "  it  themselves. 

However,  the  hall  in  Common  Street 
proved  anything  but  what  satisfied  Mr. 
Barnard's  ideal  of  the  right  surroundings 


64         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD, 

for  a  "  Children's  Church."  Underneath  it 
was  the  engine  house,  where  gathered  every 
Sunday  a  crew  of  loafers,  smoking,  drink- 
ing, and  making  such  a  hubbub  that  even 
in  hot  weather  it  was  necessary  to  keep 
the  windows  shut  to  secure  stillness  enough 
to  render  the  services  audible.  Moreover, 
during  week  days  the  hall  was  used  for  a 
primary-school  room,  necessitating  ardu- 
ous preparation  to  get  things  ready  for 
Sunday,  and  rendering  futile  every  attempt 
to  give  it  an  attractive  appearance.  Be- 
sides, it  was  crowded  to  overflowing. 

So  popular,  none  the  less,  had  the  ser- 
vices become,  and  so  many  superior  and 
charming  men  and  women  had  Mr.  Bar- 
nard's enthusiasm  enlisted  in  his  aid,  that 
numbers  of  children  of  richer  parentage 
from  the  old  established  churches  insisted 
on  deserting  the  sacred  feast,  dry  as  the 
remainder  biscuit,  served  in  their  own  par- 
ishes, and  on  joining  heart  and  soul  in  a 
movement  so  much  more  congenial  with 
their  time  of  life.  So  far  as  such  mingling 
of  rich  and  poor  went,  Mr.  Barnard  heart- 
ily approved  of  it.  He  felt  it  was  good  for 
both.     The  last  thing  he  believed  in  was 


THE   CHILDREN'S   CHURCH.  65 

a  church  composed  of  the  exclusively  poor 
or  the  exclusively  rich,  whether  children  or 
adults.  "  Freely  ye  have  received,  freely 
give,"  was  his  maxim  respecting  the  favored 
classes.  "  Of  such  is  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven"  was  his  equal  sense  of  the  nat- 
ural, hearty,  unconventional  way  in  which 
children  take  to  one  another,  regardless  of 
questions  of  birth,  dress,  or  the  quarter  of 
the  town  lived  in. 

None  the  less,  this  exodus  from  the  older 
churches  awakened  great  jealousy  on  the 
part  of  their  pastors,  and  Mr.  Barnard  was 
sharply  taken  to  task  for  seducing  the 
children  from  their  natural  relations  to 
their  ancestral  churches.  In  vain  he 
pleaded  that  he  had  never  in  this  way  so- 
licited a  single  child.  Then  must  he  for- 
bid them  to  come  and  positively  refuse 
to  receive  them.  This  he  declined  to  do, 
agreeing,  however,  to  admit  none  but  with 
the  written  consent  of  their  parents.  Still, 
so  thoroughly  interested  were  large  num- 
bers of  children,  as  to  find  no  difficulty  in 
obtaining  such  written  consent  from  fathers 
and  mothers,  only  too  glad  to  see  their 
boys  and  girls  heartily  enlisted  in  anything 


66         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

good.  ''  If  ministers  do  not  want  their 
children  to  roam  abroad,"  said  Mr.  .Bar- 
nard, "  they  must  make  it  attractive  to  them 
at  home.  Bees  will  go  where  the  honey- 
suckles bloom.  None  come  to  us,"  he 
added,  "  from  King's  Chapel,  for  Mr. 
Greenwood  makes  it  so  pleasant  there  for 
his  children  that  they  do  not  want  to  stray 
off  anywhere  else." 

Ideas  are  revolutionary,  as  much  so  in 
the  case  of  children  as  of  grown  people. 
That  the  whole  attitude  of  the  church 
toward  the  religious  education  of  children 
must  be  revolutionized  now  became  Mr. 
Barnard's  deep  and  even  fiery  conviction. 
Religion  in  the  way  in  which  it  is  presented 
is  made  a  burden  to  them.  It  is  offered 
them  in  abstract,  lifeless  propositions.  It 
has  no  affinities  with  their  free,  happy  na- 
tures. It  does  not  smell  of  the  clover, 
sparkle  with  the  sunshine,  carol  with  the 
birds.  Invite  them  to  the  open  festival 
of  sky,  lily,  spontaneous  joy,  and  love,  as 
Jesus  proclaimed  it,  and  you  will  create  a 
church  whose  genuineness  will  reach  on 
and  emancipate  all  other  churches. 

How   intensely   this    feeling   had    now 


THE  CHILDREN'S  CHURCH.  6  J 

taken  hold  of  Mr.  Barnard's  mind  is  evi- 
dent in  a  letter  he  wrote  about  this  time  to 
one  of  his  brothers.  "  At  the  bottom,"  he 
says,  "  I  have  little  or  no  faith  in  our  pres- 
ent churches  or  in  any  of  our  other  admin- 
istrations of  Christianity.  I  do  not  find 
my  idea  of  my  Master  realized  in  them. 
We  are  too  formal,  too  pharisaical,  too  cold 
and  heartless.  The  religious  life  should 
be  as  spontaneous,  simple,  and  easy  as  the 
natural  life.  Jesus,  to  my  apprehension, 
was  not  a  priest,  nor  did  he  have  a  pulpit. 
He  lived  among  people,  he  understood 
their  wants,  he  was  always  ready  to  show 
his  sympathy  and  good  will.  .  .  .  Let  a 
man  at  the  present  day  tread  the  same 
path  and  be  conversant  and  familiar  with 
man  in  the  market,  at  the  shop,  by  the  fire- 
side, and  at  the  sick-bed,  —  let  him  do  all 
this  out  of  the  abundance  of  his  heart  and 
with  untiring  devotion,  as  simply  and 
quietly  too  as  he  breathes,  —  and  the  same 
blessed  gospel  will  be  uttered  over  again." 


X. 

PLEA    FOR   A   NEW    BUILDING. 

As  stated  in  the  previous  chapter,  the 
noise,  crowding,  and  general  discomfort 
inevitably  bound  up  with  such  a  gath- 
ering-place as  the  hall  over  the  engine 
house  had  brought  Mr.  Barnard  to  the 
settled  conviction  that  he  must  have  larger 
and  more  commodious  accommodations, 
or  give  up  the  hope  of  establishing  such 
a  "  Children's  Church  "  as  he  yearned  to 
see  in  happy  operation.  Accordingly,  he 
addressed  a  long  and  earnest  appeal  to 
the  Central  Board  of  the  Benevolent  Fra- 
ternity of  Churches,  under  which  he  held 
commission  as  a  minister  at  large,  pray- 
ing that  a  suitable  building  might  be 
erected  for  the  purposes  he  had  in  view. 

The  whole  number  of  families  uncon- 
nected with  any  parish,  in  the  quarter  of 
the  city  assigned  to  his  charge,  he  put 
down  at  four  hundred  and  fifty-seven,  three 


PLEA   FOR  A   NEW  BUILDING.         69 

hundred  and  three  of  these  families  com- 
posed of  the  worst  classes  of  our  poor, 
reckless,  improvident,  debased  by  intem- 
perance and  kindred  vices.  Friend  Street 
Chapel,  in  which  he  preached  to  such  of 
them  as  he  could  collect  on  Sunday  even- 
ings, he  described  as  a  place  so  close  and 
hot  "  that  it  always  had  to  be  closed  dur- 
ing the  summer  months; "  adding,  "  I  have 
often  preached  there  when  I  should  have 
been  ashamed  to  have  carried  my  friends 
with  me,  the  air  was  so  bad.  I  trust  we 
shall  be  equally  careful  of  the  feelings  and 
comfort  of  the  poor."  Quite  as  strong 
objections  could  be  brought  against  the 
engine  house  in  which  the  children  were 
gathered. 

What  was  needed,  he  now  insisted,  was 
a  commodious  building,  conveniently  sit- 
uated, embracing  an  audience- room  for 
three  or  four  hundred  people  and  smaller 
rooms  for  classes,  —  "  in  every  way  worthy 
to  take  rank  among  the  permanent  insti- 
tutions of  the  city."  Further,  "  we  must  do 
more  than  provide  such  places  for  the 
poor.  We  must  go  with  them,  we  must 
share  in  their  devotions,  we  must  show  by 


70         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

our  presence  at  the  altars  raised  for  their 
benefit  that  we  are  interested  also  in  the 
sacrifice  to  be  offered  thereon.  I  am  glad 
to  believe  that  God  will  never  smile  upon 
the  attempt  to  carry  the  distinctions  of 
the  world  into  the  house  of  his  worship. 
The  Friend  Street  Chapel  has  always  re- 
ceived important  aid  from  those  members 
of  the  wealthier  classes  who  have  attended 
its  services.  Whenever  such  attendance 
was  diminished,  I  observed  the  ill  effects 
among  the  poor.  They  spoke  of  it  them- 
selves with  feelings  of  regret.  Should  it 
ever  cease,  the  attendance  of  the  poor 
would  cease  with  it.  My  own  audience 
at  the  South  End  is  of  a  mixed  character. 
Were  it  not  so,  it  would  never  have  been 
as  large.  I  pray  that  through  the  blessing 
of  Heaven  it  may  always  continue  the 
same." 

For  reasons  easily  comprehensible,  Mr. 
Barnard's  appeal  to  the  Central  Board  was 
adversely  reported  on.  The  whole  experi- 
ment of  the  ministry  at  large  was  com- 
paratively a  new  one,  and  had  not  yet 
gained  the  confidence  of  the  community. 
Even    under   existing    conditions,   it  was 


PLEA   FOR  A   NEW  BUILDING.  71 

hard  to  raise  the  needful  funds  to  carry  it 
on.  Therefore,  propositions  inevitably  en- 
tailing further  outlay  were  listened  to  with 
dread,  even  by  the  conscientious  and  de- 
voted men  who  had  charge  of  its  affairs. 
Besides,  Mr.  Barnard  had  already  aroused 
feelings  of  coolness,  if  not  of  personal 
enmity,  among  laymen  and  among  his 
clerical  brethren,  as  men  of  his  impetuos- 
ity of  temperament  are  always  sure  to 
do.  Unintentionally  he  had  made  inroads, 
as  has  been  seen,  on  the  young  lambs  of 
their  flocks ;  and  altogether  there  was  a 
fire,  an  immensity  of  demand  and  expecta- 
tion, an  alarming  novelty  in  methods,  about 
him,  that  older,  and  perhaps  more  expe- 
rienced, men  could  not  keep  pace  with. 
So  far,  the  ministry  at  large  had  been  con- 
ducted on  certain  definite  lines  imprinted 
on  it  by  the  philanthropic  genius  of  its 
original  inspirer.  Dr.  Tuckerman,  an  inno- 
vator speedily  transformed  by  his  ardent 
converts  into  an  impassable  barrier,  as  is 
always  the  unwilling  fate  of  such  men. 
And  now  this  impetuous  young  cavalier 
of  humanity  was  charging  outside  of  es- 
tablished   lines.      Especially   did    certain 


72  CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

really  excellent  men  become  more  than 
half  afraid  of  him,  as  they  saw  him  con- 
centrating his  interest  with  increasing 
ardor  on  the  unheard-of  idea  of  a  "  Chil- 
dren's Church,"  and  insisting  with  such 
pertinacity  that  in  the  administration  of  re- 
ligion the  poor  stood  in  quite  as  vital  need 
of  beauty  of  surroundings  and  of  variety 
and  charm  of  ministrations  as  the  rich. 

There  is  a  world-old  puzzle  which  has 
exercised  and  bewildered  the  wits  of 
countless  generations  of  children,  namely, 
which  came  first,  the  hen  or  the  ^g^. 
Yet  it  is  a  puzzle  that  does  not  lose  a  whit 
of  its  perplexity  when  raised  by  adults  in 
questions  of  philanthropy.  "  There  could 
not  have  been  a  hen  without  an  ^^^  to 
be  hatched  out  of,"  say  the  bafHed  little 
ones,  "  and  there  could  not  have  been  an 
^ZZ  without  a  preliminary  hen  to  lay  it." 
Equally  did  Mr.  Barnard  find  himself 
summoned,  in  his  dealings  with  the  poor, 
to  wrestle  with  this  obscure  conundrum : 
Shall  I  work  first  on  the  parents,  so  many 
of  them  already  confirmed  in  bad  habits, 
in  the  hope  of  having  them  bring  in  the 
children,  or  shall  I  work  first  on  the  chil- 


PLEA  FOR  A   NEW  BUILDING.  jt, 

dren,  and  so  through  their  young  eager 
life  of  hope  and  aspiration  react  on  what 
remains  of  higher  feeling  in  the  parents  ? 
Does  not  the  sheep  follow  her  young  lamb 
in  the  arms  of  the  shepherd,  and  is  not 
the  same  principle  an  all-powerful  one  in 
human  nature  ?  The  most  abandoned,  are 
they  not  touched  when  they  see  their  chil- 
dren placed  under  influences  of  higher 
wisdom  and  purity  than  have  guided  their 
own  lives  ?  Unhesitatingly,  Mr.  Barnard 
answered  the  philanthropic  conundrum  in 
favor  of  the  egg  as  over  the  hen. 

Seeing,  then,  that  the  opposition  of  the 
Central  Board  could  not  be  surmounted, 
Mr.  Barnard  made  up  his  mind  to  go  for- 
ward in  his  own  independent  way.  In 
other  words,  he  now  determined  that  have 
a  chapel  of  the  kind  he  wanted,  he  would. 
Like  all  successful  innovators,  he  was  am- 
ply endowed  with  the  combative  energies 
requisite  to  push  his  ideas  to  the  front. 
So  forthwith  he  issued  the  following  ap- 
peal to  the  public  :  — 

The  building  which  I  occupy  at  pres- 
ent as  a  chapel  in  my  ministry  among  the 


74         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

poor  is  too  small  for  the  audience  and 
very  inconvenient  in  many  other  respects. 
I  am  very  desirous  of  procuring  a  new 
building,  and  I  beg  to  lay  before  you  the 
steps  I  intend  to  take  toward  effecting 
this.  An  estate  bounded  upon  Warren 
and  Pleasant  streets  can  be  procured  for 
about  six  thousand,  five  hundred  dollars. 
Such  a  building  as  I  wish  can  be  erected 
upon  it  for  the  same  sum.  This  building 
is  to  be  of  brick,  two  stories  high,  and 
measuring  fifty  feet  by  sixty.  The  lower 
floor  will  be  divided  into  two  schoolrooms, 
to  be  let  for  private  schools  during  the 
week,  and  to  be  used  for  the  Sabbath- 
school  classes  on  that  day.  There  will 
remain  upon  this  floor  two  parlors,  with 
bedrooms,  closets,  etc.,  for  my  own  resi- 
dence. In  these  I  shall  be  able  to  live  in 
the  centre  of  my  sphere  among  the  poor. 
I  can  maintain  a  constant  and  pleasant 
connection  with  the  children  under  my 
charge,  and  all  plans  that  promise  to  be 
of  service  can  readily  be  put  into  opera- 
tion. The  upper  story  will  be  thrown  into 
a  single  hall,  to  be  used  as  a  place  of  wor- 
ship and  religious  instruction,  and  to  be 


PLEA   FOR  A   NEW  BUILDING.         75 

open  for  the  Thursday  evening  lecture  on 
Natural  History,  or  for  any  other  means 
of  enlightening,  elevating,  and  sanctifying 
both  parents  and  children  of  the  poorer 
and  neglected  classes.  Thirteen  thousand 
dollars  will  be  needed  for  the  above  pur- 
pose. This  sum  I  hope  to  raise  in  the 
following  manner  :  I  will  subscribe  a 
thousand  dollars,  and  a  friend  of  mine 
five  hundred,  which  we  will  connect  per- 
manently with  the  concern,  so  that,  in 
case  of  my  death,  or  any  accident,  that 
shall  threaten  a  depreciation  of  the  prop- 
erty, these  fifteen  hundred  dollars  shall 
pass  to  the  credit  of  the  other  subscrib- 
ers of  the  stock.  The  remaining  sum  of 
eleven  thousand,  five  hundred  dollars  I 
propose  to  raise  among  my  friends.  The 
estate  will  be  mortgaged  for  the  several 
sums  they  may  advance.  Five  per  cent, 
per  annum  will  be  paid  them  in  interest, 
and  I  will  keep  the  building  insured  and 
in  good  repair.  The  estate  is  one  which 
Mr.  Francis  Jackson  thinks  will  for  many 
years  continue  to  advance  in  value.  The 
building  proposed  could  easily  be  con- 
verted  into  a  dwelling-house  or  disposed 


76         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

of  in  some  other  way  without  a  material 
loss,  should  it  become  necessary  to  do  so. 
Mr.  Charles  Barnard,  Israel  Munson,  Esq., 
Mr.  Wm.  Sturgis,  and  Mr.  F.  Stanton 
have  subscribed  a  thousand  dollars  each. 
I  have  taken  the  liberty  of  asking  your 
attention  to  this  plan. 
With  great  regard, 

Your  obedient  servant, 

C.  F.  Barnard. 

So  great  was  the  personal  interest  Mr. 
Barnard  had  inspired  in  many  minds  that 
this  circular,  issued  purely  on  his  own  ac- 
count, met  with  immediate  acceptance. 
Men  of  the  standing  of  William  Sturgis, 
Robert  G.  Shaw,  James  Jackson,  Charles 
Jackson,  William  Prescott,  Nathan  Apple- 
ton,  Patrick  T.  Jackson,  Ebenezer  Francis, 
John  L.  Emmons,  Abbott  Lawrence,  came 
forward  at  once  with  subscriptions  of  from 
five  hundred  to  one  thousand  dollars ;  while, 
in  smaller  amounts,  large  numbers  of  the 
best  men  and  women  of  the  city  were  repre- 
sented on  the  list.  As  highly  capable  busi- 
ness and  professional  men,  wary  enough 
of  yielding  in  charitable  El  Dorados  to  any 


PLEA   FOR  A   NEW  BUILDING.  77 

lure  of  dazzling  investments,  it  was  no 
doubt  far  more  the  enthusiasm  of  the  pro- 
jector of  Warren  Street  Chapel  that  moved 
them  than  the  aerial  mirage  of  five  per 
cent,  interest.  His  own  fervid  conviction 
that  he  was  to  found  an  institution  that 
would  "  lay  up  treasure  in  heaven  "  carried 
the  day  with  them,  awakening  in  their 
breasts  a  class  of  sentiments  that  would 
have  lain  dormant  had  it  been  a  practical 
question  of  establishing  a  new  bank  or 
cotton-mill. 


XL 

WARREN    STREET   CHAPEL. 

The  corner-stone  of  Warren  Street 
Chapel  was  laid  July  23,  1835,  Dr.  Tuck- 
erman  adding,  in  his  own  handwriting, 
to  the  inscription  to  be  put  under  the 
stone  the  words,  "primarily  for  children." 
Mr.  Barnard  was  now  supremely  happy. 
Hardly  did  the  Jews  returning  from  the 
Babylonian  Captivity  watch  with  more 
eager  delight  the  rebuilding  of  the  temple 
on  its  old  desolated  site,  than  now  he  and 
his  flock  of  boys  and  girls  the  rearing  of 
this  humble  building.  It  was  to  be  their 
own  church,  the  church  of  the  boys  and 
girls;  and  it  is  averred  that  not  a  brick 
was  laid  or  a  nail  driven  but  that  some 
juvenile  eye  was  on  it  to  make  sure  that  it 
was  done  in  a  workmanlike  way.  Already 
were  preparations  rife  among  the  little 
ones  for  a  big  balloon  to  be  sent  up  on  the 
completion  of  the  august  temple. 


WARREN   STREET   CHAPEL 


WARREN  STREET  CHAPEL.  79 

Certainly,  thus  far  Mr.  Barnard^s  cher- 
ished idea  of  making  the  children  enthu- 
siastic over  their  religious  home  was  show- 
ing fruit.  As  a  symbol  of  thanksgiving 
on  a  grave  ecclesiastical  occasion,  a  big 
balloon  might  not  have  been  strictly  canon- 
ical, but  it  was  far  better,  it  was  genuine 
and  right  out  of  the  heart.  Nor  was  it, 
after  all,  —  from  the  child  point  of  out- 
look, —  so  reprehensible  a  view  of  the 
spiritual  privileges  of  departed  souls  in 
heaven,  when  one  celestially  favored  little 
boy  told  how  he  "  dreamed  the  other  night 
that  he  was  living  in  heaven,  but,  all  the 
while  he  was  there,  he  could  look  down 
on  earth  and  see  the  little  chapel." 

How  very  naturally  such  a  dream  as 
this  might  have  been  imaged  out  in  the 
brain  of  a  sleeping  child  is  vividly  illus- 
trated in  a  life-long  memory,  revealed 
nearly  fifty  years  later  in  a  tribute  to 
Charles  F.  Barnard  by  Thomas  Hills, 
Esq.,  once  a  pupil  and  afterwards  for  many 
years  a  devoted  worker  in  the  chapel.  "  I 
remember,"  said  Mr.  Hills,  "  as  if  it  were 
but  a  few  weeks  ago  that,  playing  with  my 
cousin  in  the  neighborhood,  Mr.  Barnard 


8o         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

stopped  as  he  was  passing,  and,  pointing 
to  this  spot,  said,  '  Boys,  there  is  where 
we  are  going  to  build.  Soon  you  will  see 
those  old  wooden  buildings  torn  down,  and 
in  their  place  our  chapel  will  stand  ! '  He 
made  us,  members  of  his  infant  class,  feel 
that  the  chapel  did  not  belong  to  grown 
people  like  our  fathers  and  mothers,  and 
that  it  was  not  a  place  to  which  we  were 
sent  as  to  our  day  school,  or  to  which  we 
were  permitted  to  come,  but  that  it  was 
our  chapel,  and  that,  with  him  and  our 
teachers,  we  had  an  interest  in  it.  And 
when  we  assembled  upon  a  beautiful  July 
morning  at  the  laying  of  the  corner-stone 
...  it  was  with  a  conscious  feeling  of 
ownership  by  our  great  family,  of  which 
he  was  the  head  and  we  were  members. 
And  when  the  hymn  of  dedication  first 
made  these  walls  resound  with  vocal  music, 
it  was  easy  for  us  to  understand  that  we 
had  a  home  other  than  that  in  which  we 
ate  our  daily  bread,  and  could  comprehend 
that,  with  the  affection  and  respect  we  felt 
for  our  minister  and  teacher  and  the  re- 
gard he  had  for  us,  it  was  possible  that  we 
had  a  Father  on  whom  we  could  rely  when 


WARREN  STREET  CHAPEL.  8 1 

death  should  break  the  circle  of  our  fire- 
sides." 

On  the  last  Sunday  of  January,  1836, 
the  new  building  was  open  for  services. 
Seven  hundred  and  thirty  children  re- 
sponded to  the  call,  and  the  four  rooms 
set  apart  for  the  Sunday-school  exercises 
soon  doubled  to  eight.  In  addition,  morn- 
ing and  afternoon  church  services  were 
regularly  held  in  the  large  hall,  the  after- 
noon one  crowded  to  excess. 

"  The  Service  for  Children,"  now  wrote 
Mr.  Barnard  to  a  friend,  "  is  working 
wonders.  It  outruns  all  my  anticipations, 
and  those,  you  know,  were  always  most 
sanguine.  It  has  already  worked  a  most 
happy  change  among  my  poor.  Religion, 
with  all  its  hopes,  now  awakens  an  interest 
in  many  a  parent's  bosom,  where  it  long 
slumbered  in  unbroken  repose.  The  chil- 
dren are  full  of  the  matter.  Their  little 
eyes  sparkle,  and  their  little  mouths  speak 
their  strong  feeling.  '  Oh !  we  shall  be  at 
the  meeting  next  Sunday.  Who  is  going 
to  preach  ?  What  shall  we  hear  .f* '  fall  upon 
my  ear  wherever  I  go.  Many,  who  know 
no  better,  ascribe  it  all  to  novelty.     The 


82  CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

outward  form  is  novel.  The  thing  itself 
is  as  old  as  man's  creation.  Pray  for  us 
that  we  may  have  wisdom  from  on  high 
to  bear  Heaven's  message  to  Heaven's 
children." 

It  is  to  be  kept  constantly  in  mind  that 
the  parish,  so  to  speak,  over  which  Mr. 
Barnard  now  presided  stood  in  absolute 
contrast  with  that  of  an  established,  trained, 
and  highly  organized  community  of  men, 
women,  and  children.  The  question  of 
questions  with  him  was  what  is  best  and 
most  hopeful  in  view  of  the  especial  class 
I  am  called  on  to  deal  with,  and  not  at  all 
what  is  best  for  those  who  have  comfort- 
able homes,  plenty  of  books,  instruction, 
and  amusement,  careful  guardianship  to 
keep  them  out  of  the  streets  and  to  save 
them  from  evil  companionship. 

What  Mr.  Barnard  saw  clearly  before 
his  eyes  was  wretched  tenements  with,  too 
often,  ignorant,  slatternly,  and  drunken 
fathers  and  mothers  as  moral  examples, 
and  the  fascination  of  haunting  the  wharves 
on  Sundays  as  a  school  of  initiation  into 
idleness,  profanity,  vulgarity,  and  pilfering. 
On  these  data  was  it  that  his  mind  was 


WARREN  STREET  CHAPEL.  83 

made  up,  and  that  he  uncompromisingly 
took  what  was,  in  those  days,  an  entirely 
original  stand,  familiar  as  it  has  since 
become.  With  perfect  accuracy  did  Dr. 
Edward  E.  Hale  declare,  twenty-five  years 
later,  on  the  occasion  of  the  Silver  Birth- 
day of  Warren  Street  Chapel :  "  The  his- 
torical step  was  taken,  —  the  new  principle 
of  work  was  solved,  —  when  Mr.  Barnard 
saw  that  with  the  persons  with  whom  he 
dealt,  the  Sunday-school "  (started  origi- 
nally in  Miss  Dix's  parlor),  "  instead  of  be- 
ing accessory  to  something  else,  was,  in 
itself,  the  whole  thing.  Do  not  let  us  hide 
it  in  a  barn  or  cellar.  Do  not  let  us  hud- 
dle these  children  together  on  crowded 
benches.  .  .  .  But  let  us  provide  for  their 
Sunday  worship,  since  we  know  they  have 
no  other.  ...  It  was  out  of  such  a  resolve, 
wholly  new,  as  I  believe,  in  history,  that 
this  chapel  was  founded." 

In  the  now  far-back  days  in  which  this 
fell,  it  was  brought  as  a  reproach  against 
Protestant  churches  that,  while  open  on 
Sundays  for  stated  services,  they  were  yet 
kept  hermetically  sealed  during  the  rest 
of  the  week;   their  chill  and  dreary  silence 


84         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

broken  only  by  the  buzzing  of  swarms  of 
flies.  Positively  the  most  ghostly  of  places, 
the  best  adapted  of  all  to  call  up  the  sense 
of  a  haunted  house,  was  a  Protestant 
church  on  week  days.  All  this  could  not 
fail  to  suggest  a  damaging  contrast  be- 
tween such  deserted  temples  and  the  Cath- 
olic churches  in  which  mass  was  said  every 
day,  and  whose  doors  stood  ever  open  to 
the  prayers  of  the  faithful.  That  no  such 
reproach  should  be  brought  against  the 
"  Children's  Church "  was  Mr.  Barnard's 
resolve  from  the  start.  Primarily  for  this 
reason  did  he  want  to  take  up  his  own  res- 
idence in  the  building,  to  be  on  hand  as 
much  as  possible  when  the  little  ones 
should  run  in,  and  to  meet  them  in  the 
most  familiar  way.  The  chapel  should  be 
made  the  centre  of  activities  of  every  kind, 
—  activities  industrial,  literary,  mechanical, 
social,  as  well  as  religious.  Severe,  in- 
deed, was  the  tax  thus  imposed  on  the 
time  and  strength  of  his  zealous  co-work- 
ers, and  nothing  furnishes  such  strong 
proof  of  the  inspiring  quality  inherent  in 
their  leader  as  the  ready  response,  on  Sun- 
days and  week  days,  year  in  and  year  out. 


WARREN  STREET  CHAPEL.  85 

of  SO  large  a  band  of  superior  men  and 
women,  eager  to  dedicate  to  the  service  of 
the  disinherited  their  special  gifts  of  teach- 
ing, drawing,  singing,  lecturing,  reciting. 

There  was  no  article  of  faith  more  fer- 
vidly embraced  by  Mr.  Barnard  than  that 
of  the  duty  of  the  rich  in  culture  and 
opportunity  to  share  their  higher  privileges 
with  the  poor  and  neglected.  He  did  not 
want  a  class  of  well-meaning,  but  dull  and 
uninteresting,  helpers  in  his  work.  He 
wanted  women  of  the  greatest  refinement 
and  charm,  to  hold  up  before  the  boys  and 
girls  an  ideal  of  attractive  dignity.  He 
wanted  men  of  business  ability,  lawyers, 
doctors,  retired  sea-captains,  men  who 
would  command  respect  for  superior  know- 
ledge and  character.  Nothing  was  too 
good  for  children  to  whom  was  now  to  be 
opened  up  a  new  sense  of  the  richness  of 
the  world  and  the  possibilities  of  human 
nature. 

There,  for  example,  was  his  classmate. 
Dr.  Henry  I.  Bowditch,  newly  returned 
from  completing  his  medical  studies  in 
Europe,  with  a  head  full  of  science  and  a 
heart  full  of  humanity.     What  a  man  to 


86         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

talk  to  boys !  How  like  bees  over  a  flower- 
bed would  they  swarm  to  suck  the  honey 
out  of  his  experience  of  strange  cities  and 
customs.  "  Was  it  not  a  real  providence," 
now  wrote  Mr.  Barnard  to  a  friend,  "  that 
when  we  were  in  college,  I  put  Bowditch 
up  to  keeping  a  journal,  just  as  I  did  my- 
self }  Now,  what  blessings  I  am  reaping 
out  of  the  journal  he  kept  in  Europe,  and 
from  which  he  takes  his  texts  for  talks  to 
the  children ! " 

All  through  life,  here  was  the  principle 
on  which  Mr.  Barnard  acted,  and  one 
which  contributed  immensely  to  his  suc- 
cess. As  years  went  by,  not  a  Jenny  Lind 
or  a  Madame  Sontag  could  come  to  Bos- 
ton, that  he  did  not  know  how  to  persuade 
her  to  come  and  sing  to  his  Warren  Street 
boys  and  girls.  "  No  one  knows  how 
much  of  latent  talent  lies  hidden  in  these 
neglected  children,"  Mr.  Barnard  often 
emphatically  said.  "  Let  them  see  and 
hear  the  best,  and  this  will  bring  it  out !  " 
His  prescience  was  justified  when,  in  later 
years,  some  of  the  finest  vocalists  of  the 
country,  and  many  of  the  foremost  patrons 
of  art,  gratefully  acknowledged  that  they 


WARREN  STREET  CHAPEL.  B>J 

owed  their  first  awakening  to  the  oppor- 
tunities thus  afforded  them  of  coming  into 
contact  with  what  was  beautiful  and  in- 
spiring. 

On  taking  charge  of  the  work  of  War- 
ren Street  Chapel,  Mr.  Barnard  was  still 
in  the  service  of  the  Benevolent  Fraternity 
of  Churches,  receiving  from  them  a  salary 
of  a  thousand  dollars.  For  some  time, 
however,  the  relation  on  either  side  had 
been  growing  strained,  and  soon  was  it 
destined  to  become  more  so.  The  scheme 
of  operation  insisted  on  by  the  Fraternity 
involved  the  holding  of  three  services  on 
Sunday  for  adults,  the  children  to  accom- 
pany their  parents,  besides  being  provided 
with  special  instruction  in  the  Sunday- 
school.  Mr.  Barnard,  however,  had  in  the 
morning  and  afternoon  entirely  reversed 
this,  making  the  children's  service  the  chief 
attraction,  and  seeking  to  draw  in  the  par- 
ents on  the  principle  of  the  lamb  leading 
the  sheep,  and  not  the  sheep  the  lamb. 
The  evening  service  for  adults  he  still 
kept  up.  But  his  heart  was  not  in  it  as  it 
was  in  the  children's  service.  He  could 
not  make  it  as  natural  and  spontaneous. 


88         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

It  came  at  the  end  of  the  day,  when  his 
forces  were  spent,  and  the  weary  headache 
which,  with  him,  so  generally  accompanied 
exhaustion,  was  on.  His  health,  he  felt, 
could  not  long  stand  such  excess  of  work 
and  excitement.  So  the  third  service 
would  have  to  be  abandoned,  —  for  a  time, 
at  any  rate. 

Very  naturally,  to  the  directors  of  the 
Fraternity,  this  seemed  a  total  departure 
from  the  methods  they  had  at  heart.  They 
were  accustomed  to  the  old-fashioned 
ways,  and  had  no  such  belief  in  children 
as  he,  no  such  faith  in  a  free,  joyous, 
democratic  administration  of  religion  as 
would  make  it  delightful  as  well  as  improv- 
ing to  their  young  minds  and  hearts.  So 
courteously,  but  firmly,  they  wrote  to  Mr. 
Barnard  that  they  considered  he  was  not 
carrying  out  the  purpose  for  which  the 
Fraternity  was  founded,  but  exactly  re- 
versing it. 

Just  on  the  contrary,  to  his  mind,  the 
idea  of  going  back  to  the  old  methods 
seemed  going  back  to  tedium  and  hum- 
drum. To  him  individually  it  would  have 
been  so.     As,  fifty  years  later,  his  friend, 


WARREN  STREET   CHAPEL.  89 

Dr.  Henry  I.  Bowditch  said,  "  Mr.  Barnard 
was  very  obstinate  in  carrying  through  what 
he  determined  upon ;  and  this  was  one  of 
his  merits.  I  would  not  give  a  farthing 
for  anybody's  service  in  a  good  cause  who 
is  not  obstinate."  But  he  was  more  than 
obstinate.  He  was  inspired  with  an  infal- 
lible instinct.  He  was  original  with  the 
insight  of  a  great,  hospitable  child  heart, 
and  as  genuine  in  his  faith  in  his  own  lov- 
ing way  as  Jesus  when  he  cried,  "  Suffer 
the  little  children  to  come  unto  me ! " 

The  difference,  then,  that  had  arisen 
between  Mr.  Barnard  and  the  council  of 
the  Fraternity  was  an  irreconcilable  one. 
Much  could  honestly  have  been  urged  on 
either  side.  Already  had  the  success  of 
Mr.  Barnard's  personal  appeal  to  the  pub- 
lic for  the  sinews  of  war  with  which  to 
build  Warren  Street  Chapel  proved  a 
stimulus  to  the  Fraternity  to  make  an 
equally  successful  appeal  for  funds  with 
which  to  build  commodious  chapels  for 
Rev.  Frederick  T.  Gray  and  Rev.  John 
T.  Sargent,  the  other  representatives  of 
the  ministry  at  large,  —  chapels  in  which 
admirable  work  was  going  on  in  the  old 


90         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

established  way.  No  doubt  there  was  de- 
mand enough  in  the  city  for  both  methods, 
even  if  they  could  not  be  carried  on  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  constitutional  provisions 
of  one  presiding  body.  So  Mr.  Barnard, 
with  the  advice  of  his  own  stanch  friends, 
resigned  his  former  position  under  the  Fra- 
ternity, and  took  his  stand  alone. 

It  was  far  better  so.  He  was  no  man 
to  work  to  advantage  under  the  direction 
of  others.  By  nature  he  was  too  original, 
too  fertile  in  new  ideas,  too  unconvention- 
ally daring,  too  dictatorial,  —  at  times  too 
willful,  —  to  take  the  word  of  command 
from  anybody  else.  He  believed,  indeed, 
in  discipline,  but  in  discipline  under  him- 
self as  general  and  planner  of  the  cam- 
paign, holding  his  high  commission  direct 
from  God,  "  the  Father  of  the  fatherless." 
Yes,  it  was  far  better  so. 

Mr.  Barnard's  resignation  as  agent  of  the 
Fraternity  once  accepted,  the  "  Commit- 
tee of  the  Contributors  to  Warren  Street 
Chapel "  brought  forward  and  carried  a 
resolution  that  he  should  receive  for  his 
services  a  salary  of  twelve  hundred  dol- 
lars a  year,  and  that  a  further  sum  of  four 


WARREN  STREET  CHAPEL,  91 

hundred  dollars  should  be  raised  by  sub- 
scription for  the  other  expenses  of  the 
institution. 

Alas  !  the  story  of  purely  independent 
movements,  cut  off  from  the  support  of 
strong  organizations,  is  ever  the  same. 
Always  are  they  doomed  to  a  hard  and 
ofttimes  bitter  struggle  for  life.  It  is  the 
old  experience  of  the  volunteer  force  as 
over  against  the  regular,  the  pioneer  mis- 
sionary as  over  against  the  incumbent  of 
the  established  and  wealthy  church.  All 
through  the  history  of  Warren  Street 
Chapel,  as  expenses  increased,  the  strain 
to  make  the  two  ends  meet  was  a  painful 
and  at  times  a  pitiful  one.  Mr.  Barnard's 
own  immediate  family,  indeed,  his  father 
and  brothers,  year  in,  year  out,  contributed 
self-denyingly  in  money  and  personal  ser- 
vice. Still,  to  meet  constantly  recurring 
emergencies,  a  thousand  expedients  had 
to  be  resorted  to,  —  expedients,  however, 
which,  as  is  so  often  the  case,  called  out  an 
amount  of  sacrifice,  ingenuity,  and  hearty 
cooperation  that  proved  a  blessing  in  the 
end. 

Through   his    marriage,   however,   with 


92  CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

Miss  Sarah  Homes,  which  took  place 
January  4,  1837,  Mr.  Barnard  was  before 
long  to  find  refuge  from  a  throng  of  petty 
cares  in  eminently  happy  domestic  rela- 
tions. With  Miss  Homes  he  had  long 
been  associated  in  his  philanthropic  work, 
and  throughout  life  it  was  his  favored  lot 
to  find  in  her  a  loving  companion  to  help 
and  cheer  him  in  his  toil,  as  well  as  a  de- 
voted mother  of  their  children. 


XII. 

NEW   WAYS    WITH    CHILDREN. 

In  the  building  of  the  chapel  Mr.  Bar- 
nard had  now  achieved  the  dearest  wish 
of  his  heart.  Free  and  untrammeled,  he 
could  act  out  his  whole  nature  and  em- 
body in  positive  institutions  the  dream  of 
his  life.  What  did  he  mean  to  do  with  his 
opportunity  ? 

The  answer  to  this  lies  in  a  series  of  re- 
ports continued  for  many  years,  and  con- 
stituting a  little  library  in  themselves.  But 
a  series  of  reports  cannot  be  incorporated 
into  a  memoir,  nor  would  they  furnish  en- 
tertaining reading.  All  that  can  be  done 
is  to  gather  from  them  data,  wherewith 
to  illustrate  the  constant  aims  he  kept  in 
view,  and  the  enthusiasm  and  fidelity  with 
which  he  and  his  devoted  helpers  pursued 
them.  From  beginning  to  end  these  re- 
ports are  a  confirmation  of  the  statement 
of  Rev.  Eber  R.  Butler — a  Warren  Street 


94         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

boy  by  birthright,  and  many  years  later 
the  head  of  its  activities  —  that  "  Mr.  Bar- 
nard's originality  colored,  and  to-day  over- 
shadows, his  institution." 

Chief  of  all  Mr.  Barnard's  contributions 
to  the  work  he  achieved  was  the  contri- 
bution of  Charles  F.  Barnard  himself, — 
the  contribution  of  a  grown  man  sympa- 
thetically capable  of  looking  on  a  child 
from  the  child's  inside  point  of  view.  It  is 
one  of  the  rarest  of  endowments.  Of  all 
the  dreary  performances  one  is  called  on 
to  witness,  can  a  drearier  be  named  than 
to  watch  the  ponderous  infelicity  of  the 
attempt  of  many  a  speaker  —  a  man,  per- 
haps, of  large  experience,  great  knowledge, 
and  really  kindly  heart  —  to  interest  in  an 
address  a  gathering  of  children  }  The  first 
fly  that  begins  to  buzz  on  a  window-pane 
at  once  captures  his  entire  audience,  and 
rivets  attention  on  something  at  last  felt 
to  be  worth  listening  to.  Curiously  one 
asks,  was  this  poor  man  ever  a  boy  him- 
self, or  —  as  he  could  not  have  been  a  girl 
—  did  he  ever  have  a  little  sister  .^^  Did 
he  ever  thumb  and  finger  a  marble,  go 
skating,  catch  a  bullpout,  have  a  fight,  run 


A'EW  WAYS   WITH  CHILDREN.        95 

races  on  a  beach,  witness  the  burial  of  a 
little  mate,  have  a  mother  who  nightly 
heard  him  say  his  prayers  ?  If  so,  why 
do  not  lively  recollections  of  all  these  put 
him  in  touch  with  the  little  ones  before 
him,  and  make  him,  now  on  the  spot,  yearn 
to  enjoy  a  genuine  sympathetic  time  with 
them,  out  of  a  heart  made  young  once 
more  through  all  this  imagery  of  fairy- 
land, while  yet  a  heart  deepened  by  an  ex- 
perience that  should  enable  him  helpfully 
to  interpret  all  for  their  good  ? 

Alas !  the  moral  improvement  mania 
has  taken  such  overmastering  possession 
of  him  that  before  he  has  resorted  to  any 
promising  measures  toward  luring  and 
hooking  his  little  fish,  he  insists  on  split- 
ting, smoking,  and,  so  he  trusts,  eternally 
preserving  him.  Never  a  thought  is  given 
to  bait  of  any  kind,  much  less  to  that  live 
bait  which  alone  will  tempt  a  rise  out  of 
the  sprightlier  kinds  of  fish. 

It  was  the  consciousness  of  this  that 
made  logical,  broad-browed  Dr.  Wayland 
once  say  to  James  Freeman  Clarke,  that 
"he  regarded  it  as  the  greatest  possible 
compliment  to  his  sermon,  if  a  child  was 


96         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD, 

interested  in  it."  No  doubt,  for  the  great 
divine  must  always  have  had  before  his 
eyes  the  fear  of  Goldsmith's  hit  at  ponder- 
ous Dr.  Johnson,  that,  should  he  attempt 
a  fable,  he  would  make  the  little  fishes  talk 
like  whales.  Upon  all  which  Dr.  Clarke 
wisely  comments  :  "  In  talking  to  children, 
there  are  two  dangers,  that  of  going  over 
their  heads  and  becoming  unintelligible, 
or,  in  trying  to  avoid  this,  of  becoming 
trivial  and  commonplace.  *  Milk  for  babes,' 
—  yes ;  but  the  milk  should  be  good,  rich 
milk,  not  milk  and  water.  When  Jesus 
thanked  God  that  the  things  hidden  from 
the  wise  and  prudent  had  been  revealed  to 
babes,  he  certainly  did  not  refer  to  any- 
thing shallow  or  anything  commonplace. 
...  As  I  remember  Charles  Barnard  in 
his  teachings,  this  was  his  method.  I  see 
him  standing  in  his  chapel,  with  flowers 
and  busts  and  pictures  around  him,  hold- 
ing in  his  hand  some  curiosity  of  nature 
or  art,  on  which  he  is  giving  a  religious 
object  lesson  to  the  children.  This  was  a 
cheerful,  happy  scene.  There  was  no  for- 
mality in  his  discourse ;  but  he  talked 
pleasantly,  with  references  to  what  he  had 


NEW   WAYS   WITH  CHILDREN.         97 

seen  and  heard  during  the  previous  week 
and  what  had  happened  in  the  city." 

Now,  in  the  New  England  of  1836-37, 
children  —  especially  children  of  the  less- 
favored  classes  —  were  not  half  as  well 
understood  as  they  are  to-day.  Just  as 
much  as  the  slaves  needed  a  Garrison 
to  emancipate  them  from  their  peculiar 
shackles,  did  the  boys  and  girls  of  the  poor 
need  a  Barnard  to  emancipate  them  from 
the  shackles  of  too  much  dry  catechism, 
too  much  memorizing  of  Scripture  dates, 
too  monotonous  a  moral  diet  unrelieved 
by  beauty  or  poetry.  As  one  looks  over 
the  books,  religious  or  secular,  prepared 
in  those  days  for  their  improvement,  one 
thinks  perforce  of  Howells's  description  of 
the  ascetic  New  England  farmer  family,  as 
they  sat  drinking  the  most  acrid  kind  of 
Japan  tea,  on  the  apparent  principle  that 
it  combined  the  maximum  of  stimulus  with 
the  minimum  of  pleasure. 

That  there  was  any  quicksilver  in  chil- 
dren's blood,  any  power  hidden  in  birds  or 
flowers  to  lend  wings  to  their  spirits  or 
breathe  fragrance  through  their  souls,  any 
refining   or   inspiring   influence  in  art  to 


98         CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

nurture  higher  ideals,  was,  especially  in 
the  case  of  the  children  of  the  poor  and 
ignorant,  considered  something  bordering 
on  weak,  if  not  dangerous,  sentimentality. 
Reverence  for  Scripture,  indeed,  forbade 
any  application  of  such  disparaging  com- 
ment to  the  jubilee  outburst  of  Jesus  over 
the  lilies  of  the  field :  "  Verily  I  say  unto 
you  that  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was  not 
arrayed  like  one  of  these!"  No  doubt, 
serious  people  felt,  this  was  all  right 
enough  in  the  Holy  Land,  nay,  that  here 
was  an  emotion  which  might  be  innocently 
indulged  in  even  in  America,  —  out-of- 
doors.  But  the  bare  idea  of  flowers  in  the 
church  or  on  the  pulpit !  Here  was  some- 
thing sacrilegious.  It  took  away  its  sanc- 
tity from  the  sacred  desk,  and  degraded  it 
to  the  level  of  the  dining-table.  It  ban- 
ished the  thought  of  worship,  and  substi- 
tuted for  it  a  mere  tickling  of  aesthetic 
sensibility. 

To-day  all  people  smile  at  this,  and  wide 
enough  would  the  little  children  open  their 
eyes  in  wonder,  if  told  by  their  teachers 
that  once  roses  and  lilies  and  salvias  and 
heliotropes  were  warned  like  lepers,  out  of 


NEW   WAYS   WITH  CHILDREN.       99 

the  sanctuary,  as  liable  to  communicate 
diseases  infectious  to  piety.  Yet  just  here 
lies  the  use  of  the  biographies  of  pioneers. 
Charles  F.  Barnard  was  the  first  man  in 
Boston  to  dare  to  take  the  ban  off  flowers 
and  pronounce  them  pure  and  innocent 
enough,  as  well  as  dear  enough  to  the  heart 
of  God,  to  be  admitted  to  the  privilege  of 
helping  to  celebrate  the  Sunday  service. 
Yes,  and  he  would  have  the  hardihood  to 
hold  one  of  them,  a  rose  or  geranium,  in 
his  hand,  and  actually  to  discourse  about 
it  to  the  children  on  Sunday,  as  free  from 
any  fear  of  spiritual  contagion  as  though  it 
were  a  tract. 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  it  took  a  great 
deal  of  courage  to  do  this  at  that  period. 
It  exposed  one  to  ridicule  and  was  thought 
namby-pamby.  "  Another  specimen  of 
Barnard's  skim-milk  for  babes !  "  contempt- 
uously was  said  of  it.  Very  differently, 
however,  did  the  children  feel.  Soon  they 
grew  eager  to  cultivate  pots  of  flowers  in 
their  homes,  or  to  collect  everything  that 
grew  wild,  from  the  first  dandelions  of 
spring  to  the  last  aster  or  goldenrod  of 
Fall,  —  not    to    speak    of    great    glorified 


lOO       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

branches,  scarlet,  gold,  or  purple,  of  autumn 
leaves,  all  to  lend  charm  to  their  chapel. 
And  so,  after  all,  the  flowers  did  really 
prove  contagious.  Rapidly,  in  various 
quarters,  the  infection  spread;  at  first 
breaking  out  — so  as  not  to  cause  too  much 
consternation  —  in  inobtrusive  little  bou- 
quets on  various  city  pulpits,  and  finally 
blossoming  into  the  rich  floral  ovations 
that  to-day  voice  the  Creator's  praise  in  all 
our  churches.  Might  it  not  be  well  now 
and  then,  while  sharing  in  the  sanctuary 
the  sense  of  Jesus'  rapture  over  the  lilies, 
to  breathe  a  benediction  on  the  name  of 
the  first  religious  teacher  in  Boston  who 
had  in  his  own  heart  enough  of  the  self- 
same Jesus  rapture  over  the  flowers  of  the 
field  to  insist  on  their  being  brought  in  to 
the  church  to  help  all  to  glorify  God  ? 

Again,  at  the  time  in  which  Mr.  Barnard 
began  his  work  in  Warren  Street  Chapel, 
comparatively  little  interest  was  felt  in 
works  of  art,  in  the  shape  of  pictures  and 
statues.  Pictures  and  statues,  as  elements 
either  of  education,  or  of  refining  and  ele- 
vating pleasure,  were  by  the  majority  looked 
down  upon  as  very  much  on  a  level  with 


NEW   WAYS   WITH  CHILDREN.      lOI 

flowers,  —  indeed,  on  tihe  X^hpW,  as  ^„pjcetty 
axiomatic  gauge  o£-the  degrae^oQf .  ^ebl»3- 
mindedness  and  sickly-  sehtimeritality  to  be 
looked  for  in  those  who  made  much  of 
them. 

There  was,  it  is  true,  a  small  and  select 
class  of  cultivated  men  and  women  who 
felt  otherwise,  and  to  them  had  been  due 
the  foundation  of  the  gallery  of  pictures 
and  of  casts  from  the  antique  sculptures, 
in  the  Boston  Athenaeum.  But  by  the  far 
larger  number  of  citizens  this  gallery  was 
severely  let  alone.  The  idea  that  in  any 
way  it  might  prove  helpful  toward  the  ele- 
vation of  the  children  of  the  poorer  classes 
would  have  seemed  as  absurdly  high-flown 
to  most  people  as  a  deliberate  proposition 
to  lift  the  standard  of  the  cuisine  of  the 
poor  by  the  introduction  of  terrapins  and 
truffles. 

When,  therefore,  it  got  noised  about 
that  Rev.  Charles  F.  Barnard  was  in  the 
way  of  striking  up  talks  with  any  chance 
group  of  idle  boys  he  met  on  the  street,  and 
to  end  off  these  talks  with  an  invitation  to 
go  with  him  to  the  Boston  Athenaeum, 
to  see  some  beautiful  pictures  and  statues, 


I02       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

many  an  e^'ebro^*  was  lifted  high  in  deri- 
♦si6fo,v  -'The  moral  pocket-handkerchiefs  for 
Congo  negrbes,  so'  ridiculed  by  Dickens, 
seemed  but  a  mild  effusion  of  sentimen- 
tality in  comparison  with  bringing  up  street 
waifs  on  Raphael  and  Phidias:  "  By  such 
proceedings  Mr.  Barnard  is  forfeiting  the 
respect  of  sensible  people  and  seriously  in- 
juring his  influence,"  was  an  ejaculation  fre- 
quently heard  in  those  days.  There  was 
a  meaning  at  the  time  in  the  phrase  "  to 
injure  one's  influence,"  —  a  meaning  the 
depth  of  which  was  soon  found  out,  to  his 
own  social  and  financial  cost,  by  anybody 
who  had  the  courage  to  speak  an  honest 
word  on  the  new  criticism  of  the  Bible,  or 
on  behalf  of  the  negro  slaves.  Such  an 
one  "injured  his  influence  "  by  compelling 
people  to  set  him  down  as  a  free  thinker 
or  a  fanatic ;  Mr.  Barnard,  by  compelling 
them  to  set  him  down  as  weak  and  silly. 

None  the  less,  in  divine  obstinacy  Mr. 
Barnard  kept  on  his  ordained  way.  He 
meant  to  introduce  pictures  and  statues 
into  his  own  little  chapel,  and  teach  the 
children  to  enjoy  the  highest  creations  of 
the   highest   minds.     His   thoughts,  how- 


NEW   WAYS    WITH  CHILDREN.      103 

ever,  went  out  far  beyond  this  humble 
spot.  In  this  chapel  would  he  set  Boston 
an  object  lesson,  and,  through  the  beauty 
and  fruit  of  it,  spread  a  kindred  influence 
over  the  public  schools  and  the  churches 
of  the  land.  To  him  everything  was  reli- 
gious if  seen  in  God;  everything  full  of 
the  wisdom  and  love  of  God.  This  was 
the  foundation-stone  of  his  creed.  To  be 
capable  of  a  rich  worship,  the  mind  must 
live  in  a  rich  world.  Music  was  worship 
of  the  divine  harmony,  drawing  and  paint- 
ing were  worship  of  the  divine  beauty, 
dancing  itself  was  worship  of  the  divine 
grace  and  courtesy,  the  fusion  of  vulgar 
egotism  with  the  charm  of  social  unity. 

It  was  the  moral  greatness  of  this  man 
that  he  could  believe  all  this  of  the  es- 
pecial classes  with  which  he  was  dealing, 
and  that  no  amount  of  rudeness,  poverty, 
or  narrow  ignorance  could  dishearten  his 
soul,  or  damp  the  fire  of  his  faith  that,  after 
the  exalted  and  rapturous  image  in  which 
Jesus  conceived  it,  he  could  create  a  bit  of 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  on  earth,  right 
there  in  humble  Warren  Street  Chapel. 
Indeed,  the  people  who  laughed  superiorly 


I04       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

at  him  would  have  laughed  equally  —  had 
not  mechanical  tradition  restrained  them 

—  over  the  whole  spirit  and  imagery  of 
Christ's  parable  of  the  prodigal  son.  For 
what,  in  the  parable,  does  the  happy  father 
do  when  he  has  got  back  his  once  dissi- 
pated but  now  penitent  son,  but  rejoicingly 
to  send  round  for  his  humble  peasant 
neighbors,  and  call  in  the  village  band, 
and  bid  them  strike  up  the  music  for  — 
God  save  the  mark!  —  dancing;  all  to 
give  vent  to  the  jubilee  of  his  heart  over  a 
son  that  "  was  dead  and  is  alive  again,  was 
lost  and  is  found  "  ?  Think  of  the  fate  of 
any  old-fashioned  divine  of  by-gone  days, 
who  —  commissioned  to  submit  to  his 
Board  a  tract  on  the  "  Forgiveness  of  Sin" 

—  should  have  ventured  to  indulge  in  such 
profane  imagery  as  that,  instead  of  ending 
off  the  story  with  the  calling  together  of  a 
dreary  prayer-meeting.  Think  further  of 
his  daring  to  add  insult  to  injury  by  ap- 
pealing to  the  example  of  Jesus  in  warrant 
of  such  a  proceeding.  Would  it  not  have 
been  pronounced  "  wresting  the  Scrip- 
tures to  his  own  damnation,"  and  would 
he  not  have  been  sternly  rebuked  for  the 


NEW   WAYS   WITH  CHILDREN.       105 

demoralizing  influence  such  a  tract  would 
exert  on  the  young?  Such  is  it  to  "have 
eyes  and  see  not,  ears  and  hear  not." 

In  contrast  now  with  the  ridicule  show- 
ered on  certain  features  of  this  inaugura- 
tion of  a  new  spirit  in  dealing  with  chil- 
dren, how  touching  the  grateful  tribute 
uttered  in  retrospect  nearly  fifty  years  later 
by  one,  Mr.  Thomas  Hills,  who,  a  Warren 
Street  boy,  could,  after  a  long  and  honor- 
able career  in  a  position  of  high  trust,  say 
of  his  old  teacher  that  no  words  could 
express  the  debt  of  gratitude  "  of  those  of 
us  who  grew  up  as  his  children,  and  who 
imbibed  a  love  for  art  from  his  decora- 
tions of  the  walls  of  our  chapel  home  and 
from  the  works  of  great  masters  which  he 
viewed  with  us ;  as  well  as  for  the  beauti- 
ful in  nature  from  the  flowers  he  placed 
constantly  before  us,  and  from  the  open 
landscape  of  the  country  to  which  he  led 
his  children.  And  when  the  chill  winds 
checked  our  outdoor  pleasure,  the  ample 
rooms  of  this  building  were  bright  with 
children  amused  with  innocent  games  and, 
under  careful  direction,  joining  in  the 
graceful  dance.     How  he  moved   among 


I06       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

US  with  his  grave  smile  and  such  a  quiet 
dignity  that,  even  in  our  play,  it  seemed  as 
impossible  to  be  rude  or  boisterous  as 
when  he  looked  down  upon  us  from  the 
pulpit!  With  what  zeal  he  animated  his 
teachers  and  their  classes,  making  of  all  of 
us  a  body  of  helpers !  In  the  long  weeks 
of  preparation  for  the  floral  procession  of 
each  returning  Fourth  of  July,  what  miles 
were  traveled  by  parties  in  search  of  moss 
for  the  baskets  that  by  the  thousand  were 
made  by  patient  workers  in  our  upper 
room!  And,  as  the  day  drew  near,  the 
evening  work  was  added  to  that  of  the  day, 
until  the  night  was  added  to  the  evening 
at  last." 


XIII. 

SETTING    OBJECT    LESSONS. 

In  the  last  chapter,  exclusive  emphasis 
was  laid  on  a  single  feature  of  Mr.  Bar- 
nard's idea  of  a  religious  home  for  neg- 
lected children,  and,  along  with  them,  of 
such  children  as  were  not  neglected  except 
in  the  sense  of  being  kept  on  too  prosaic 
and  joyless  a  regimen.  This  religious 
home  he  would  make  bright  and  cheery; 
a  scene  in  which  they  who  had  freely  re- 
ceived should  freely  give ;  in  which  cul- 
ture should  meet  ignorance,  and  refine- 
ment rudeness  ;  in  which  the  youngest  and 
poorest  should  find  opened  to  them  the 
privilege  of  service  to  others. 

A  glowing  ideal,  however,  is  one  thing; 
the  making  it  real  under  the  conditions  of 
our  poor  humanity  quite  another.  No  end 
of  hard,  patient  work  was  called  for.  It 
had  to  become  "  Blessed  be  drudgery ! " 
with  large  numbers.     And  the  astonishing 


I08       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

thing  in  the  case  of  Warren  Street  Chapel 
was  that  so  many  could  be  found,  culti- 
vated women  and  men  with  heavy  business 
responsibilities,  to  stand  by  year  after  year 
in  close  and  crowded  rooms,  in  the  day 
time  and  in  the  evening,  working  on  a 
mass  of  humanity  that  sometimes  would 
meet  what  was  done  with  gratitude,  and 
sometimes  drive  the  most  patient  mind  to 
desperation.  It  is  the  law  of  this  world 
that  the  abnegation  of  duty  on  the  part 
of  the  shiftless,  ignorant,  and  heartless 
shall  be  atoned  for,  not  by  themselves, 
but  through  the  extra  burdens  imposed 
on  the  conscientious  and  loving. 

Of  course  there  was  the  inevitable  sew- 
ing-school, so  commonplace  in  name,  and 
yet  so  indispensable  a  preliminary  to  the 
coming  of  any  domestic  kingdom  of  heaven 
on  earth.  Great  ado  is  made  over  the 
needle  that  guides  the  mariner  across  the 
deep,  or  which,  where  it  fails  to  keep  true 
to  the  pole,  wrecks  him  on  the  reef.  But 
it  plays  for  good  or  for  ill  a  far  inferior  part 
in  human  life  —  especially  in  the  life  of 
the  poor  —  to  that  of  the  needle  the  little 
girl  learns  deftly  to  use,  or  grows  up  igno- 


SETTING   OBJECT  LESSONS.  1 09 

rant  of  how  to  ply.  Of  this  Mr.  Barnard 
was  clearly  convinced,  —  more  and  more 
clearly  every  day,  as  he  made  his  rounds 
through  the  lower  quarters  of  the  city. 
Therefore,  in  his  first  report,  he  empha- 
sizes the  importance  of  introducing  regular 
instruction  in  sewing  into  the  public 
schools,  saying  that  "  a  salute  of  cannon 
ought  to  be  fired  on  the  day  on  which  it 
should  be  done."  Gunpowder  has  been 
wasted  on  far  less  worthy  objects  of  con- 
gratulation. 

"  Meanwhile,  whatever  we  can  do  in 
this  way,"  he  says,  "  supplies  a  very  serious 
defect  in  the  system  of  public  instruction. 
A  slight  knowledge  of  the  classes  for 
whom  it  is  intended  will  satisfy  any  one 
that  acquamtance  with  the  use  of  the  needle 
is  fully  as  important  to  these  girls  as  read- 
ing  and  writing.  Their  domestic  habits 
and  character,  in  many  cases  their  future 
innocence  and  peace,  depend  upon  their 
acquiring  it."  Over  and  over  again  does 
Mr.  Barnard  repeat  this  conviction.  "  A 
man  is  in  rags,  —  his  children  are  in  tat- 
ters, —  his  home  is  a  scene  of  unthrift  and 
disorder,  —  and    is  it    surprising    that   he 


no       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

seeks  other  places  and  companions,  or  lays 
hold  on  any  means  of  oblivion  ?  Will  men 
ever  be  any  better  till  women  are  made  bet- 
ter, till  every  girl  at  every  school  is  better 
fitted  to  perform  her  whole  and  honorable 
part  as  sister,  wife,  and  mother?" 

One  hundred  and  twenty  girls,  under 
twelve  teachers,  in  time  to  increase  to  two 
hundred  and  fifty  and  three  hundred,  were 
brought  together  every  Saturday  after- 
noon, and  while  the  work  was  going  on 
interesting  books  were  read  aloud.  As  a 
comment  on  the  neglect  that  might  come 
on  this  especial  branch  of  secular  learning, 
Mr.  Barnard  states,  "  Two  of  our  pupils 
come  from  a  family  that  owns  but  one 
needier  Still,  the  actual  work  accom- 
plished with  the  girls  was  as  nothing  to 
the  general  example  set.  To  the  excellent 
results  achieved  in  schools  like  this  and 
those  of  the  Fraternity  of  Churches  was 
due  the  later  introduction  of  sewing  into 
the  public  schools  of  the  city  as  an  in- 
dispensable branch  of  instruction.  The 
first  thing  was  to  give  an  effective  object 
lesson. 

In  his  rounds  among  the  poor,  Mr.  Bar- 


SETTING   OBJECT  LESSONS.  1 1 1 

nard  was  forcibly  struck  with  the  disad- 
vantages, in  the  way  of  earning  anything, 
such  mothers  were  at  who  had  infant 
children  to  look  after.  To  loan  them 
temporarily  to  a  neighbor  was  not  always 
easy,  while  to  lock  them  up  in  a  room 
while  the  mother  was  away  at  a  job  of 
washing  was  to  invite  serious  danger.  So, 
as  a  second  example  of  a  greatly  needed 
reform,  an  infant  school  was  opened  in 
one  of  the  basement  rooms.  "  This  is  in- 
tended," Mr.  Barnard  says  in  his  first 
report,  "  for  those  who  are  too  young  for 
the  primary  schools.  It  is  carried  on 
rather  as  a  dame's  school,  or  well-regulated 
nursery,  than  as  a  place  of  formal  instruc- 
tion. We  hope  that  while  it  presents  a 
safe  and  pleasant  asylum  for  the  little  ones 
each  day,  it  may  lengthen  the  mothers' 
hours  of  work  and  lessen  their  applications 
for  charitable  relief.  Its  expenses  are  de- 
frayed in  part  by  the  parents,  in  part  by  a 
committee  of  ladies  who  have  the  direc- 
tion of  it,  and  in  part  by  myself."  In 
these  later  days,  people  have  grown  so 
accustomed  to  such  institutions  as  to  take 
them  for  a  matter  of  course  and  to  think 


1 1  2       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

they  must  always  have  existed.  They  are 
indeed  one  of  the  most  touching  embodi- 
ments of  Jesus  calling  the  little  children 
unto  himself  and  laying  his  hands  upon 
them.  But  here,  as  in  everything  else 
that  is  good,  an  object  lesson  had  first  to 
be  given  in  a  very  humble  way. 

In  this  same  opening  year  of  the  chapel 
was  it  that  Mr.  Barnard,  with  the  help 
of  several  gentlemen,  started  an  evening 
school  twice  a  week,  for  boys  who  were 
in  stores  or  at  work  during  the  day.  It 
began  with  twenty  pupils,  who  rapidly 
increased  to  sixty,  and  went  on  to  five 
hundred.  "No  pains  were  required  to 
collect  them,"  he  says;  "they  came  of 
their  own  accord,  or  at  the  invitation  of 
those  previously  admitted."  In  other 
words,  the  movement  met  a  real  want. 
"  Our  public  school  system,"  he  later  says, 
"is  not  sufficiently  pliant  as  yet  to  adjust 
itself  to  particular  wants.  The  existence 
of  the  class  embraced  in  our  evening  school 
is  readily  accounted  for.  Most  of  the  boys 
are  employed  during  the  day  in  families, 
offices,  stores,  or  factories.  Circumstances 
compelled  them  to  begin  their  own  sup- 


SETTING  OBJECT  LESSONS.  113 

port  at  an  early  age,  and  long  before  their 
education  was  completed.  They  are  in 
danger  of  losing  the  little  they  have  ac- 
quired. Some  of  them  have  never  gone 
to  school.  Few  of  them  possess  any  other 
means  of  instruction.  What  greater  bene- 
fit can  we  give  them  than  to  afford  them  an 
opportunity  to  attend  an  evening  school  t 
It  will  at  least  keep  them  out  of  the  streets 
after  dark,  and  thus  remove  a  prolific 
source  of  evil  in  all  large  towns.  It  may 
so  far  quicken  and  enlighten  their  intel- 
lect as  to  secure  most  important  results  in 
after  years,  both  for  the  individual  and  the 
community.  It  is  fearful  to  think  how 
much  talent  in  each  generation  is  suffered 
to  go  to  waste,  like  fertile  seed  scattered 
upon  the  barren  ocean.  Is  it  not  one  of 
our  most  sacred  duties  to  prevent  this 
loss?  Who  can  duly  estimate  the  value 
of  a  single  mind  rescued  from  darkness,  or 
led  to  the  streams  of  truth  and  knowledge 
that  have  been  opened  for  it  by  the  all- 
wise  Creator } " 

Here  again  Mr.  Barnard  was  the  first 
to  set  an  example  of  a  movement,  later 
taken  up  also  by  the  Fraternity,  that  was 


114      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

destined  to  exert  a  wide-reaching  influence, 
and  finally  to  become  incorporated  into 
the  system  of  the  public  schools,  with 
ample  funds  to  carry  it  on  thoroughly. 
The  marked  originality  of  the  man  who 
sees  with  his  own  eyes,  instead  of  being 
blindly  led  by  routine,  displayed  itself  in 
this  as  in  so  many  other  ways.  It  was  his 
way  of  translating  into  vernacular  Boston 
the  Palestinian  precept,  "  Gather  up  the 
fragments,  that  nothing  be  lost !  "  While 
to  most  men  of  his  day  the  text  read  but  as 
a  kind  of  Poor  Richard's  Almanac  illustra- 
tion of  the  value  of  economizing  the  scraps 
after  a  feast,  —  the  relation  of  to-day's 
crusts  of  bread  to  the  possible  chance  of 
a  scant  meal  for  the  poor  to-morrow, — 
he  saw  its  living  application  to  the  way  of 
providing  spiritual  food  for  the  educational 
waifs  of  humanity,  who,  by  reason  of  small 
means,  ill  health,  or  personal  fault,  had 
been  shut  out  from  the  original  feast  of 
knowledge ;  nay,  saw  that  these  poor  waifs 
themselves  were  the  very  fragments  to  be 
gathered  up,  that  nothing  should  be  lost. 

With  ladies  for  teachers,  a  similar  school 
was  now  started,  on  Wednesday  and  Sat- 


SETTING   OBJECT  LESSONS.  II5 

urday  afternoons,  for  girls  at  service  in 
families  or  at  work  in  factories,  —  "a  class 
equally  in  need  with  our  boys  of  the  ele- 
ments of  instruction."  The  response  at 
first  was  large,  but  it  was  found  difficult  to 
appoint  hours  for  the  purpose  that  would 
not  interfere  with  their  hours  of  work. 
The  attendance  accordingly  diminished, 
though  still  remaining  sufficient  to  warrant 
carrying  on  the  school. 

Still  another  project  very  near  to  Mr. 
Barnard's  heart  as  a  means  of  education 
was  the  establishment  of  a  cabinet  of  nat- 
ural history.  No  man  felt  more  strongly 
the  importance  of  opening  children's  eyes 
in  admiration  and  wonder  to  the  manifold 
richness  of  the  mineral,  vegetable,  and 
animal  kingdoms  of  the  earth  they  live  on. 
For  the  lack  of  any  stimulus  to  this,  of 
how  many  children  —  particularly  poor 
children  in  a  city  —  does  it  hold  true  that 
a  primrose  is  to  them  a  yellow  primrose, 
nothing  more.  The  eye  gets  no  training. 
A  stone  remains  merely  a  stone,  whether 
of  quartz,  slate,  marble,  iron  ore,  or  native 
copper.  A  tree  remains  merely  a  tree, 
whether  of  oak,  beach,  maple,  or  birch.    A 


Il6      CHARLES  FHANCIS  BARNARD. 

fish  remains  merely  a  fish,  oblivious  of  all 
family  divisions  into  cod,  haddock,  smelts, 
or  lowly  sculpins. 

Now,  Mr.  Barnard  had  too  eager  an  eye 
to  entertain  much  respect  for  a  Creative 
Power  that  should  have  been  content 
with  ushering  into  existence  such  barren 
abstractions  as  stone,  tree,  and  animal. 
They  would  have  proved  tediously  mpnot- 
onous.  The  mind  would  have  exhausted 
the  divine  resources  at  a  glance.  Neither 
did  he  believe  it  possible  to  rise  to  any 
enthusiastic  worship  of  the  Creative  Power 
except  through  the  contemplation  of  an 
infinite  variety  and  richness  of  types  that 
should  call  out  the  outcry,  "  Oh,  the  depths 
and  the  heights  both  of  the  knowledge 
and  the  wisdom  of  God ! "  But  to  awaken 
such  feeling,  the  types  must  be  before  the 
eye.  Then  talks  must  be  given  about 
them,  and  the  delight  of  the  teacher  must 
be  imparted  to  the  child. 

This,  too,  —  the  cabinet  of  natural 
history,  —  was  ridiculed  at  first  as  one  of 
"  Barnard's  fads."  No  salvation  for  poor 
children,  he  thinks,  but  in  making  miner- 
alogists, botanists,  and  physiologists  out  of 


SETTING   OBJECT  LESSONS.         1 1 7 

them !  In  reality,  no  thought  was  farther 
from  his  mind.  He  was  neither  one  of 
these  himself,  but  he  was  a  far  happier 
man,  and  dwelt  in  a  much  more  marvelous 
world,  for  the  little  he  knew  about  such 
things.  Why  should  the  children  of  the 
poor  be  shut  out  of  their  rich  inheritance 
and  doomed  to  live  in  a  narrow,  monoto- 
nous, colorless  world  t  A  taste  for  beetles 
and  butterflies  has  saved  many  a  man  from 
a  taste  for  alcohol.  Get  a  child  interested 
in  making  a  collection  of  such  objects,  and 
he  is  just  so  much  farther  on  the  road  to 
the  kingdom. 

Many  were  the  letters,  full  of  grateful 
thanks  for  what  the  little  cabinet  had  done 
to  enrich  the  world  to  them,  which  Mr. 
Barnard  later  on  received  from  men  and 
women  in  various  walks  in  life.  Such 
cabinets"  are  in  all  our  public  schools  to- 
day ;  but  in  those  days  they  were  not. 
This  was  another  of  the  Warren  Street 
Chapel  object  lessons.  At  that  date  ab- 
stractions were  believed  in  far  more  than 
the  open  book  of  nature.  Slate  and  mar- 
ble, oak  and  maple,  eagle  and  wren,  were 
taken  to  have   been   made,  to  afford  the 


Il8       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

basis  for  a  magnificent  generalization  of 
all  their  impertinent  varieties  into  mineral, 
vegetable,  and  animal.  This  mastered  by 
the  child,  he  had  the  whole  thing  "  in  a 
nutshell,"  while  "  counting  himself  king  of 
infinite  space." 

Already,  in  his  very  first  report,  was 
Mr.  Barnard  exercised  over  another  ques- 
tion, that  of  opening  to  all  a  free  library 
and  a  free  reading-room,  and  nothing  pre- 
vented his  establishing  these,  on  however 
limited  a  scale  at  the  outset,  but  the  beg- 
garly expenses  of  fire  and  light.  So  much 
he  saw  that  he  wanted  to  do,  and  which 
ought  to  be  done,  but  that  alas  !  his  hands 
were  tied.  Later  on,  these  objects  were 
accomplished,  and  "  he  opened  a  large, 
free  public  library  in  the  chapel,  which, 
until  the  foundation  of  the  City  Public 
Library,  was  widely  useful."  What  a  need 
this  evinced  of  pioneers  who  could  fore- 
cast the  future  and  at  least  plant  the  seed 
for  a  coming  harvest !  In  truth,  almost 
all  the  wants  that  are  now  so  amply  pro- 
vided for  in  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Associations  of  the  day  were  anticipated 
and  met  with  cordial  furtherance  through 


SETTING   OBJECT  LESSONS.         1 19 

the  philanthropic  foresight  of  this  one 
man. 

Finally,  the  influence  for  good  of  mu- 
sic was  a  subject  of  which,  from  the  out- 
set, Mr.  Barnard  was  one  of  the  most 
ardent  advocates.  Of  course,  there  was 
music  in  all  churches  and  all  Sunday- 
schools  in  those  times,  but  of  its  power 
as  a  daily  exercise  in  the  public  schools 
in  the  way  of  inspiring  and  elevating 
childhood,  no  adequate  sense  was  felt  in 
the  community. 

Here  again  the  same  spirit  of  practical 
contempt  that  has  been  spoken  of  with 
regard  to  flowers  and  works  of  beauty  in 
art  held  sway.  All  these  were  no  doubt 
very  pretty,  very  romantic  even,  but  arith- 
metic and  grammar  were  solid  realities, 
while  the  others  were  only  airy  dreams. 
Of  the  powerful  stimulus  that  lies  in  song 
to  the  sentiments  of  patriotism  and  wor- 
ship, little  was  comprehended.  The  old 
Greek  saying,  "  Let  me  make  the  songs 
of  a  people,  and  I  care  not  who  makes 
their  laws,"  would  have  found  but  feeble 
echo.  Further,  of  the  foundation  idea  of 
all  music  in  concert,  that  it  means  the  rever- 


I20      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

ential  subordination  of  egotism  and  vulgar 
self-assertion  to  a  higher  divine  harmony, 
there  was  small  appreciation.  And  yet 
the  trained  orchestra  is  the  loftiest  symbol 
so  far  vouchsafed  to  man  of  what  church 
and  state  might  be,  were  they  pervaded 
by  a  like  spirit.  No  schismatic,  no  dema- 
gogue, is  for  a  moment  tolerated  in  the 
orchestra,  —  no  one,  in  fine,  who  does  not 
sink  his  private  individuality  in  the  gen- 
eral whole,  who  does  not  lose  his  life  to 
find  it.  All  for  the  greater  glory  of  Beet- 
hoven, Handel,  Mozart,  —  the  divine  mas- 
ters before  whom,  for  the  hour,  every  knee 
shall  bow ! 

To-day,  in  our  public  schools,  it  is  a  de- 
light to  every  visitor  to  listen  to  the  sing- 
ing of  hymns,  patriotic  songs,  and  chants 
in  the  praise  of  nature.  The  most  beauti- 
ful compositions  of  music  are  married  to 
the  most  inspiring  selections  of  poetry. 
But  in  those  days  silence  reigned  instead. 
Even  in  his  first  report,  Mr.  Barnard  called 
attention  to  this.  "  We  regret,"  he  said, 
"  that,  both  for  its  intellectual  and  moral 
advantages,  singing  has  not  been  intro- 
duced into  the  public  schools  of  the  city. 


SETTING   OBJECT  LESSONS.  121 

We  have  reason  to  hope  that  it  will  not 
long  continue  to  be  thus  overlooked.  In 
the  mean  time,  we  are  happy  to  do  all 
we  can  to  recommend  and  extend  its 
practice." 

Fortunately,  here  as  in  his  other  under- 
takings, Mr.  Barnard  had  at  command  a 
high  order  of  ability  in  his  volunteer  as- 
sistants. Notably  under  Mr.  Ezra  Weston, 
the  musical  training  of  the  boys  and  girls 
was  indefatigably  carried  on  for  years,  and 
wherever,  even  among  the  poorest,  any 
special  gift  of  voice  or  ear  was  noted,  kind 
friends  were  at  hand  to  secure  for  its  pos- 
sessor the  best  advantages  of  musical  edu- 
cation then  possible.  In  this  "  gathering 
up  of  the  fragments,  that  nothing  be  lost," 
more  than  one  of  Boston's  famous  singers, 
who  in  after  years  held  all  ears  spellbound 
in  the  rendering  of  Handel's  "  Messiah  " 
at  Christmas,  was  discovered  and  helped 
on  to  a  career. 

Here,  then,  from  the  very  start  was 
sketched  out  for  little  Warren  Street 
Chapel,  and  set  in  operation,  a  large  pro- 
gramme. It  certainly  shows  that  Mr.  Bar- 
nard's idea  of  a  church   was  not  that  of 


122       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

a  building  open  for  stated  service  twice 
every  Sunday  and  then  closed  for  a  week, 
but  that  of  a  building  which  should  be  a 
bee-hive  of  religious  and  humanitarian  ac- 
tivities, humming  with  life  and  storing  up 
honey  all  the  time. 


XIV, 

"the  dancing  parson." 

Notwithstanding  the  incessant  strain 
of  work  his  various  enterprises  entailed 
on  Mr.  Barnard,  work  of  so  exhausting  a 
kind  that  it  ought  to  have  made  clear  the 
essential  seriousness  and  self-denial  of  his 
character,  —  none  the  less,  during  the  first 
ten  years  of  his  ministry,  he  continued  to 
be  the  subject  of  virulent  attacks  in  the 
religious,  and  sometimes  in  the  public, 
press,  on  the  score  of  being  a  profane 
trifler  and  a  patron  of  pernicious  amuse- 
ment. These  attacks  emanated  from  per- 
sons no  doubt  conscientious  in  their  views, 
but  ignorant  and  bigoted  to  a  degree. 

Truly,  it  would  be  laughable,  were  it  not 
so  disheartening,  to  see  how  monotonously 
each  new  generation  repeats  the  precise 
phases  of  narrowness  and  rancor  of  the 
Judean  generation  that  lived  two  thousand 
years  ago.    Just  as  the  Master  he  so  dearly 


124       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

loved  was  characterized  by  ascetic  religion- 
ists as  a  "gluttonous  man  and  a  wine-bib- 
ber," so  Mr.  Barnard,  too,  was  dubbed  by 
their  lineal  apostolic  successors  of  his  own 
day  the  "  dancing  pahon."  If  only  there 
had  been  a  returning  ark  of  the  covenant 
to  dance  before,  after  the  very  public  man- 
ner of  King  David,  his  procedure  might 
have  been  upheld  as  strictly  canonical ; 
but  as,  profanely  and  with  no  fear  of  God 
before  his  eyes,  he  substituted,  instead  of 
rough-and-tumble  games  of  bull-in-the-ring 
and  of  promiscuous  kissing  for  forfeits,  so 
immoral  a  practice  as  orderly  and  graceful 
dancing,  —  to  him  the  best  of  schools  in 
courtesy  and  refinement,  —  he  was  set 
down  as  a  dangerous  character.  At  all 
this,  the  "dancing  parson,"  one  of  the 
gravest  of  men  in  his  demeanor,  laughed 
his  hearty  laugh  and  went  his  way. 

None  the  less,  the  epithet  stuck,  and 
created  prejudices  against  him  among  peo- 
ple who  ought  to  have  known  better. 
Very  curious  is  it,  accordingly,  to  look 
over  files  of  the  newspapers  of  those  days, 
and  to  read  the  comments,  pro  and  con, 
that  were  indulired  in  over  the  new  math- 


THE  DANCING  PARSON.  125 

ods.  The  one  which  follows,  though 
written  somewhat  later  for  the  "  Boston 
Transcript,"  and  by  a  manifest  upholder 
of  Mr.  Barnard's  ways,  will  give  a  good 
idea  of  the  feelings  enlisted. 

"  In  a  lonely  street  of  our  city  two 
women  met,  the  one  a  charitable  person 
of  the  olden  school  of  doing  good,  and 
extremely  intolerant  of  all  new  systems. 
Every  attempt  at  amelioration  of  the  con- 
dition of  the  poor,  connected  with  enjoy- 
ment, she  stoutly  resisted,  treating  the 
projectors  as  romanticists  and  visionaries. 
Moreover,  being  sufficiently  eloquent,  she 
defended  her  narrow  doctrines  in  a  power- 
ful way.  .  .  .  The  other  woman  believed 
that  our  Heavenly  Father  permits  the  sun 
to  shine  on  all  alike,  and  that  those  whose 
unhappy  destiny  obliges  them  to  vegetate 
in  dark  and  squalid  dens,  which  cannot  be 
called  homes,  should  be  brought  forth  to 
bask  in  its  blessed  rays. 

"  The  latter,  carrying  in  her  hands  a  pot 
of  tea-roses,  was  abruptly  addressed  by  the 
former  in  the  following  words :  — 

"  *  Where  are  you  going  to  with  that 
rosebush } ' 


126       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

"  '  I  have  bought  it  for  a  friendless,  bed- 
ridden sufferer  and  am  taking  it  to  her,' 
was  the  reply. 

"  *  Nonsense,  what  do  poor  people  care 
for  flowers  ?     Give  them  bread ! ' 

" '  That  has  already  been  abundantly 
supplied/ 

"  *  Then  sufficient  has  been  done.  I 
sicken  of  all  these  new-fangled  projects. 
There  is  your  bepraised  Mr.  Barnard, 
turning  the  heads  of  all  the  poor  people, 
inviting  them  to  drive  about  in  his  car- 
riage daily :  what  will  happen  next } ' 

"  '  Do  you  know  who  are  the  occupants 
of  Mr.  Barnard's  carriage  1 ' 

"  *  Not  exactly,  but  I  know  he  does  no 
positive  good.  I  do  not  approve  of  the 
Warren  Street  Chapel,  and  never  shall, 
but  shall  say  no  more  to  one  of  its  decided 
partisans.' 

"  *  No  partisan  ;  simply  a  heartfelt  be- 
liever in  this  charity.' 

"And  they  parted,  Mr.  Barnard's  op- 
ponent sailing  away  majestically,  and  evi- 
dently rejoicing  that  she  had  administered 
a  salutary  rebuke  to  her  silly  acquaint- 
ance ;  its  recipient  proceeding  on  her  way 


THE  DANCING  PARSON  12  J 

nowise  disturbed  or  deterred  from  the 
prosecution  of  her  object.  She  reached 
her  destination.  On  the  bed  lay  a  young 
woman  dying  of  consumption.  Hardly 
offering  the  customary  greeting  to  her 
ever-welcome  visitor,  she  exclaimed,  '  Oh  ! 
that  blessed  rosebush,  how  very  kind,  how 
very  kind !  give  it  to  me  to  kiss  ! '  and  kiss 
it  she  did  rapturously.  As  she  was  entirely 
dependent  upon  her  poor  neighbors  for  the 
little  care  they  could  bestow  upon  her,  it 
was  truly  her  only  companion  during  the 
daylight ;  and  in  the  solitary  hours  of  the 
night,  when  lying  restless  and  w^akeful,  she 
hung  over  her  idolized  flower,  and  blessing 
the  donor,  unconsciously  reenacted  the 
charming  story  of  '  Picciola.' " 

So  long  as,  in  the  street  dialogue  just 
quoted,  contemptuous  allusion  was  made 
to  Mr.  Barnard's  "  turning  the  heads  of  the 
poor  by  inviting  them  to  drive  about  in 
his  carriage  daily,"  it  may  be  well  here  to 
call  up  a  picture  of  the  "  leathern  conven- 
iency,"  —  the  public  nickname  conferred 
on  this  especial  carriage,  —  which  was  sup- 
posed to  be  setting  so  reprehensible  an 
example.     Who   first   christened   it   "  the 


128       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

leathern  conveniency,"  tradition  does  not 
report,  but  it  was  for  years  a  familiar  object 
on  the  streets  of  Boston  and  throughout 
the  surrounding  country.  In  reality  it 
was  a  very  plain  carryall,  covered,  top  and 
sides,  with  leather  curtains,  to  be  rolled  up 
when  it  was  fair  and  let  down  when  it  was 
rainy,  and  drawn  by  a  sober-minded  and 
extremely  moderate  horse,  apparently 
under  a  strong  sense  of  moral  responsibil- 
ity that  it  was  his  mission  in  life  to  carry  a 
class  of  people  so  full  of  aches  and  pains 
that  it  would  be  cruelty  to  jolt  them.  The 
especial  turnout  was  a  gift  to  Mr.  Barnard 
from  his  father. 

Fortunately  there  remains  a  description 
of  this  carryall,  and  of  its  ways  of  going 
on  among  the  poor,  a  considerable  portion 
of  which,  though  written  years  later  from 
vivid  memory,  may  fitly  be  quoted  here. 
It  was  from  the  pen  of  Mrs.  L.  Bennett,  in 
her  earlier  days  a  member  of  Mr.  Barnard's 
flock,  and  in  later  life  one  of  his  stanchest 
helpers  and  most  loving  admirers. 

Before,  however,  giving  the  extract  from 
Mrs.  Bennett,  this  seems  the  most  nat- 
ural place  in  which    to    record   the   inci- 


THE  DANCING  PARSON.  129 

dent  that  upon  one  occasion,  on  a  rainy 
day,  the  "leathern  conveniency,"  its  cur- 
tains down  and  its  usual  freight  inside, 
came  into  such  violent  collision  with  the 
carriage  of  Dr.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
that  the  whole  top  was  knocked  off  it  and 
the  peculiar  quality  of  its  human  contents 
displayed.  No  sooner  had  the  witty  doctor 
taken  in  at  a  glance  that  no  personal  injury 
had  been  done  than  he  cried  out  to  his 
classmate,  "  Barnard,  there  's  no  use  in  try- 
ing to  hide  your  light  under  a  bushel !  Is 
it  not  written,  '  There  is  nothing  covered 
that  shall  not  be  revealed  '  t  "  But  to  re- 
turn to  Mrs.  Bennett. 

"  Fanny  Fern  once  regretted  that  there 
were  no  children's  ministers.  Where 
could  she  have  been  all  her  days  not  to 
know  and  admire  our  children's  minis- 
ter .?  .  .  .  The  lover,  helper,  and  friend  of 
our  childhood !  The  revered  and  God- 
given  friend  of  our  maturer  years  ! 

"  There  are  few  people  in  Boston  who 
have  not  seen  our  minister  in  his  daily 
rides  through  the  streets.  His  '  leathern 
conveniency '  is  always  full  of  the  sick  and 
sorrowful  children  of  God,  who  are  thus 


130      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

enabled  to  leave  their  darkened  homes  for 
a  little  time,  and  bathe  in  the  glad  sun- 
shine, and  taste  God's  free  air,  to  have 
their  minds  directed  from  unhappy  medi- 
tations and  cankering  cares,  and,  in  the 
cheerful  society  of  the  children's  minister 
and  in  the  busy  scenes  before  them,  to 
forget  for  a  while  their  sorrow  and  pain. 
Our  children's  minister  forgets  not  the 
'  old  folks,'  —  but  here  goes  his  carriage, 
and  we  will  follow  and  overtake  it. 

"  We  get  a  friendly  smile  and  cheery 
word,  and  while  old  Charley  jogs  leisurely 
along,  we  count  his  passengers,  one,  two, 
three,  four,  and  our  minister  to  drive !  An 
old,  old  lady,  full  of  aches  and  pains,  —  a 
younger  woman  on  her  way  to  the  hospi- 
tal to  visit  her  sick  parent,  —  a  fair  and 
delicate  young  girl,  upon  whom  the  winds 
must  not  blow  too  roughly  nor  the  sun 
shine  too  fiercely,  lest  she  should  faint  by 
the  way,  —  a  little  fatherless  child,  whom 
her  often  scant  allowance  of  food  and  the 
stifled  atmosphere  of  the  narrow  city  have 
made  feeble  and  joyless. 

"  Jog  along,  Charley,  lazy  old  fellow ! 
You  have  got  no  farther  than  the  Public 


THE  DANCING  PARSON.  131 

Garden,  and  now  you  stand  quite  still, 
while  your  master  points  out  the  grand 
display  of  good  old-fashioned  hollyhocks 
that  nod  at  us  over  the  fence.  '  And  look 
again,'  he  says,  '  at  that  beautiful  patch 
of  petunias ! '  And  the  old  lady  and  the 
younger,  and  the  maiden  and  the  child, 
look  gladly  upon  so  fair  a  sight,  and  the 
old  lady  says  she  '  remembers  when  that 
garden  was  all  water,'  and  so  does  the 
minister,  and  the  young  girl  looks  incredu- 
lous and  wonders  if  the  old  lady  is  a  rela- 
tive of  Methuselah. 

"  But  here  we  are  at  the  hospital  gate. 
Through  a  large  room,  with  its  many  clean 
beds,  we  walk,  and  many  an  aching  head 
turns  wearily  on  its  pillow,  and  many  a 
dim  and  heavy  eye  recognizes  the  manly 
form  and  gracious  presence  of  our  minis- 
ter ;  but  most  of  all  and  best  of  all  a  little 
waxen-looking  creature  springs  forward  to 
greet  the  friend  he  knew  in  happier  days. 
Poor,  motherless  little  Johnny,  with  his 
old  young  face,  presses  one  thin,  small 
hand  against  his  throbbing  heart  and  ach- 
ing side  as,  half-encircled  by  the  kind  arms 
of  his  minister,  he  looks   into   the   good 


132       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

face  SO  near  his  own,  and  tells  him  '  where 
he  is  sick.'  '  And  would  you  not  like  to 
take  a  ride,  Johnny? '  asks  the  sick  child's 
friend;  and  Johnny  gladly  consenting, 
kind  friends  soon  make  him  ready,  and  he 
is  borne  away  to  the  carriage  in  the  arms 
of  his  minister,  his  eyes  beaming  with 
delight.  For  a  good  half  hour  or  more, 
little  Johnny,  whose  feet  long  since  com- 
menced their  heaven  journey,  enjoys  the 
fragrant  summer  air,  and  most  of  all  the 
society  of  his  minister  and  friend. 

"  The  minister  bids  Johnny  a  kind 
good-by,  and  tells  him  he  will  soon  come 
again  and  take  him  out  if  he  is  able  to  go, 
but  the  child,  who  in  his  hospital  life  has 
come  to  regard  death  as  something  more 
than  a  mere  possibility,  shakes  his  wise 
little  head  while  his  eyes  linger  lovingly 
upon  the  dear  face  of  his  friend,  and  says, 
'  Perhaps  I  shall  be  dead  when  you  come 
again  ! ' 

"  Back  again  into  the  carriage,  and  the 
old  lady  shakes  her  head  and  says,  '  That 
little  boy  won't  live  long,  so  wise  an4  good, 
just   like   a   little    man.'     And   they   talk 


THE  DANCING  PARSON.  1 33 

softly  about  him,  as  though  he  slept  and 
they  were  afraid  of  waking  him.  They 
reach  their  homes,  and  old  and  young  for- 
get not  to  thank  God  for  their  children's 
minister." 

As  one  reads  such  an  eye-witness  ac- 
count as  this,  he  is  struck  with  the  thought 
of  how  little  most  people  comprehend 
what  a  rare  privilege  it  must  be  to  be  able 
to  keep  a  carriage.  In  the  various  capitals 
of  Europe,  the  tourist  willingly  pays  his 
shilling  to  be  admitted  into  the  royal  sta- 
bles, where  are  carefully  preserved  the 
magnificently  carved  and  gilded  coaches 
in  which  George  the  Third  drove  to  his 
coronation  as  King  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
or  Napoleon  to  his  as  Emperor  in  Notre 
Dame,  or  Pius  Ninth  to  his  as  Pope  in  St. 
Peter's.  But  if  the  standard  of  the  New 
Testament  be  the  true  one,  who  would  be 
surprised  to  learn  that  among  the  relics 
treasured  in  the  museums  of  the  Ideal 
Kingdom,  that  humble  "  leathern  conven- 
iency,"  with  the  stuffed  skin  of  old  Charley 
still  in  the  shafts,  shines  with  far  more 
resplendent  lustre;    nay  further,  to  learn 


134       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

that  even  old  Charley  himself  —  in  what 
Swedenborg  calls  his  abiding  interior  — 
has  been  translated  to  a  realm  where  he 
is  forever  welcome  to  lie  down  in  the  green 
pastures  of  the  equine  paradise ! 


XV. 

THOMAS     STARR    KING    AND     ROBERT    C.   WIN- 
THROP. 

In  the  attempt  to  portray  the  spirit  and 
character  of  Charles  F.  Barnard,  and  to 
tell  the  story  of  the  variety  and  persistence 
of  the  humane  work  steadily  going  on  in 
Warren  Street  Chapel,  it  is  very  difficult 
not  to  seem  to  over-emphasize  the  more 
festive  side  of  the  enterprise.  What  is 
there,  indeed,  that  can  be  described  at  any 
length  in  such  patient,  self-denying,  se- 
verely taxing  work  as,  for  example,  in  the 
evening  schools,  went  on  year  in,  year 
out  ?  It  meant,  none  the  less,  on  the  part 
of  cultivated  men  and  women,  willingness 
to  deny  themselves  the  comfort  and  repose 
of  home,  and  of  many  a  social,  literary, 
and  artistic  pleasure  congenial  to  their 
tastes ;  willingness  to  teach  in  hot,  crowded, 
ill-smelling  rooms  the  very  first  elements 
of  knowledge ;  willingness  to  come  in  con- 


136       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

tact  with  a  press  of  forlorn  and  neglected 
Irish,  Swedes,  Danes,  Germans,  French, 
with  often  but  a  little  broken  English  at 
command,  and  with  minds  of  the  feeblest 
and  most  untrained  grasp ;  and  then  pa- 
tiently and  lovingly  to  help  them  to  over- 
come the  terrible  disadvantages  under 
which  they  labored  in  the  struggle  of  life. 

The  whole  system,  moreover,  was  car- 
ried on  under  the  pressure  of  a  high  ideal. 
Never  was  the  aim  lost  sight  of  that  the 
higher  nature  was  at  stake.  To  instill 
some  elementary  acquaintance  wuth  the 
history  and  institutions  of  our  country ;  to 
awaken  feelings  of  patriotism  and  the 
sense  of  the  personal  responsibility  of  every 
citizen ;  to  enlarge  the  mental,  moral,  and 
religious  horizon  of  minds  so  contracted ; 
to  be  quick  to  see  and  encourage  any  spe- 
cial aptitude,  and  to  point  out  the  means 
by  which  it  might  be  developed,  —  all  this 
involved  something  very  different  from 
mere  perfunctory  work. 

Just  here  lay  the  special  value  of  the 
system.  No  such  priceless  advantage  can 
fall  to  the  lot  of  a  maimed  and  stunted 
mind  — which  has,  none   the  less,  some 


THOMAS  STARR  KING.  137 

unsuspected  talent  latent  in  it  — as  con- 
tact with  superior  people  who  can  reveal 
to  its  possessor  its  real  significance  and 
show  him  what  it  may  grow  to.  There 
can  be  no  such  education  as  this,  for  it 
has  all  the  potency  of  taking  a  starveling 
plant  out  of  the  arid  sand  and  setting  it  in 
a  generous  soil. 

But  this  is  education  of  the  costliest 
kind,  so  far  as  the  as  yet  too  selfish  devel- 
opment of  the  more  favored  classes  goes. 
Only  the  rarest  natures  are  capable  of  the 
sacrifice  involved  in  imparting  it.  Yet 
this  costly  education  was  the  only  one  in 
which  Mr.  Barnard  believed.  He  saw  no 
possible  coming  of  Jesus'  kingdom  of 
God  on  earth  apart  from  the  law,  "  Freely 
ye  have  received,  freely  give,"  and  that 
"  The  greatest  of  all  is  he  who  is  servant 
of  all."  What  society  was  suffering  most 
from  seemed  to  him,  not  from  the  pov- 
erty and  niggardliness  of  nature  itself, 
but  from  the  utter  inadequacy  of  the 
means  of  effective  distribution,  —  distribu- 
tion not  of  pecuniary  wealth  alone,  but 
distribution  of  the  stored-up  wealth  of  love, 
culture,  social  charm,  beauty,  knowledge, 


138       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

health,  high  aim  in  life.  To  what  purpose 
that  any  given  man  or  woman  had  become 
a  reservoir  of  refreshing  water  of  life,  un- 
less that,  connected  with  it  and  branching 
out  from  it,  in  varied  ramifications,  —  as 
with  a  vast  city  reservoir,  —  was  a  great 
system  of  iron  arteries,  veins,  and  capil- 
laries, through  which  the  vitalizing  stream 
should  be  made  to  pour  itself  into  a  thou- 
sand homes,  there  to  refresh  the  thirsty, 
cool  the  lips  of  the  fever-stricken,  and 
cleanse  and  purify  the  foul.  To  live  and 
act  as  such  conduit  pipe,  even  the  tiniest, 
seemed  to  him  such  joy.  Why  should  not 
all  feel  it ! 

Later  on,  especial  mention  will  be  made 
of  some  of  the  men  and  women  who,  in 
spite  of  heavy  business  or  household  cares, 
for  years  experienced  vital  joy  in  making 
themselves  a  part  in  this  system  of  living 
distribution ;  and  no  stronger  proof  of  the 
magnetic  quality  inherent  in  Mr.  Barnard 
need  be  adduced  than  the  numbers  of  them 
he  permanently  attached  to  the  chapel,  and 
the  number  he  on  special  occasions  was  able 
to  call  in  from  outside.  Are  you  a  florist, 
a  painter,  a  naturalist,  a  machinist,  an  his- 


THOMAS  STARR  KING.  139 

torian,  a  singer  ?  —  are  you  called  Agassiz, 
Parkman,  Edward  Everett,  Starr  King, 
John  Quincy  Adams  ?  —  then,  in  God's 
name,  come  and  talk  to  our  Warren  Street 
children !  It  will  do  you  and  do  us  a 
world  of  good.  It  will  enable  you  with 
your  capacious  reservoirs  to  share  the 
function  of  serving  as  great  mains  or  hum- 
bler branch  pipes  in  the  divine  work  of 
distributing  the  wealth  of  God's  universe. 
How  heartily  Agassiz  responded  to  this 
call,  and  how  his  great,  loving  face  glowed 
with  joy  on  more  than  one  occasion  as  he 
addressed  the  children,  and  greeted  in  Mr. 
Barnard  a  living  exemplification  of  the 
genial,  exuberant  kind  of  religion  he  be- 
lieved in  himself ! 

This,  then,  in  its  immense  hospitality 
toward  the  less  favored,  was,  after  all,  the 
greatest  of  the  object  lessons  Warren 
Street  Chapel  set  the  city  of  Boston,  and 
this  was  it  that  led  George  S.  Hillard  jest- 
ingly to  say  to  Mr.  Barnard,  "  You  have 
made  the  chapel  a  university." 

When,  in  1836,  Mr.  Barnard  began, 
under  many  a  protest  and  many  a  sneer  at 
its  weakly  sentimentality,  his  own  especial 


I40      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

work,  he  said,  "  Give  me  five  years,  and 
then  judge  for  yourselves!"  He  knew 
himself,  and  he  knew  the  men  and  women 
behind  him.  How  far,  then,  he  ultimately 
succeeded  in  carrying  the  judgment  and 
winning  the  admiring  love  of  the  foremost 
people  in  the  community  is  surely  worthy 
of  record  in  any  memoir  of  the  man.  Of 
the  hundreds  of  public  testimonials  to  the 
value  of  his  work,  limitations  of  space 
forbid  more  than  the  citation  of  a  few. 
Perhaps  no  better  selection  can  be  made 
than  from  the  tributes  of  two  men,  stand- 
ing so  high  in  religious  and  in  civic  rank, 
and  yet  of  such  contrasted  temperaments, 
as  Thomas  Starr  King  and  Robert  C. 
Winthrop.  Both  spoke  on  the  same  pub- 
lic occasion,  April  27,  1851,  fifteen  years 
after  the  founding  of  the  chapel. 

Between  Thomas  Starr  King  and  Charles 
F.  Barnard  there  had  existed  for  years  the 
most  cordial  friendship.  Each  had  so 
much  of  "  the  eternal  child  "  in  his  tempera- 
ment, each  in  him  such  a  wellspring  of 
joy  in  the  divine  unity  of  truth  and  beauty, 
as  to  make  it  inevitable  that  two  such  na- 
tures should  take  lovingly  to  one  another. 


THOMAS  STARR  KING.  14 1 

Mr.  King's  church  always  stood  loyally 
and  helpfully  by  the  chapel,  and  again  and 
again  was  he  glad  to  bear  in  public  his 
hearty  testimony  in  its  favor.  On  the  oc- 
casion, then,  of  April  27,  1851,  he  spoke 
thus :  — 

"  The  question  of  absorbing  interest  to 
society  itself  is  this,  How  shall  the  church, 
which  contains  the  regenerative  elements 
of  truth,  be  brought  from  its  serene  and 
comfortable  elevation  into  redeeming  con- 
tact with  the  lanes,  the  alleys,  and  the  cel- 
lars of  the  world,  with  the  Pariah  caste  in 
our  modern  cities  and  towns,  with  the  un- 
civilized elements  of  our  civilization,  with 
the  wide  chaos  of  irresponsible  and  neg- 
lected vice  that  lies  outside  our  order  and 
threatens  to  engulf  it.?  The  question  is, 
Shall  our  light  encroach  upon  the  shadows 
and  dispel  them,  or  shall  the  shadows  close 
in  upon  and  absorb  the  light  ?  .  .  . 

"  I  remember  hearing,  a  year  or  two 
since,  the  remark  of  one  of  our  city  mis- 
sionaries, that  we  need  very  much  in  Bos- 
ton a  bridge  from  Beacon  Street  to. Broad 
Street!  This  statement  is  a  fine  symbol 
of  our  general  social  need.   We  want  some 


142       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

passage,  some  bridge,  some  conductors  — 
and  we  must  have  them  —  between  our 
Christian  light,  means,  and  energies,  and 
the  wide  wastes  of  physical  and  moral  des- 
titution. .  .  . 

"  We  know  what  the  plan  of  Christian 
philanthropy,  so  far  as  it  has  been  directed 
to  the  perishing  classes,  has  hitherto  been. 
As  a  general  thing  it  has  been,  the  chief 
hope  has  been,  to  save  a  few  out  of  the 
thousands  that  are  suffered  to  drift  stead- 
ily to  ruin.  But  plainly  our  aim  and  work 
should  be  to  buttress  first.  Christ  said, 
*  Feed  my  lambs  ! '  .  .  . 

"  We  rejoice,  Mr.  Chairman,  that  this 
chapel  has  been  founded  on  the  latter, 
wiser,  and  more  Christian  plan.  It  seeks 
to  help  to  prevent  from  falling,  to  fortify, 
to  train,  to  furnish  conservative  elements, 
through  intellectual  and  Christian  culture, 
that  shall  hold  the  soul  safe  amid  its  pe- 
culiar trials.  It  is  our  privilege  to  come 
here,  not  to  discuss  methods,  not  to  specu- 
late and  devise  plans,  but  to  celebrate  a 
fact.  This  Warren  Street  Chapel  is  an 
institution  and  a  fact,  —  an  eloquent  and 
efficient  fact.     As  was  fitly  and  poetically 


THOMAS  STARR  KING.  1 43 

said  by  one  of  the  speakers  in  this  place  a 
year  ago,  '  It  is  an  island  of  fire  in  an 
ocean  of  ice.'  .  .  . 

"  If,  sir,  a  traveler  had  gone,  eighteen 
hundred  years  ago,  to  Corinth  in  Greece, 
or  to  Ephesus  in  Asia  Minor,  he  would 
have  seen  splendid  temples,  gorgeous  pal- 
aces, great  theatres,  temples  of  justice,  and 
palaces  of  art.  But  if  he  had  a  poetic  or 
a  prophetic  eye,  he  would  have  seen  that 
the  most  important  and  glorious  edifice  of 
all  was  the  humble  abode  where  a  Jew, 
named  Paul,  worked  daily  and  nightly 
through  the  week  as  a  tent-maker,  to  earn 
a  support  that  would  enable  him  to  preach 
the  Gospel  without  charge  to  the  poor  be- 
lievers that  gathered  to  hear  him  on  the 
Sabbath.  And  in  Rome,  thirty  years  after 
the  crucifixion,  the  house  where  Paul  was 
guarded  was  the  centre  of  a  greater  glory 
and  of  greater  power  than  dwelt  in  the 
emperor's  palace  and  the  senate  hall. 
For,  from  that  lowly  roof  was  steadily  go- 
ing forth  the  energy  of  a  truth,  unknown 
to  Nero,  his  consuls,  and  his  court,  which 
would  save  human  civilization  from  the 
blight  of  heathenism  and  the  corruption 


144      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

of  the  capital,  which  would  be  the  only 
remaining  force  to  sustain  society  when 
the  Caesars'  throne  and  all  the  witnesses  of 
that  imperial  grandeur  should  be  swept 
away.  .  .  . 

"  In  this  city,  too,  we  have  great  build- 
ings, buildings  that  represent  great  forces 
and  great  ideas :  the  proud  temple  of  law 
that  crowns  the  summit  of  our  highest 
hill ;  the  halls  of  commerce  that  testify 
to  our  industrial  prosperity;  the  libraries 
that  bear  witness  to  our  taste  and  culture ; 
the  churches  that  enfold  our  stated  and 
orderly  worship.  But  among  them  all, 
none  is  nobler,  none  is  grander,  none  is 
doing  such  a  work  for  society,  civilization, 
and  Christ,  as  this  humble  chapel  in  which 
we  are  gathered,  that  lifts  no  spire  and 
makes  no  pretension  in  the  landscape  of 
the  city.  It  is  dearer,  I  have  no  doubt,  to 
the  heart  of  the  Redeemer  than  the  most 
costly  church  that  has  been  reared  in  our 
streets.  .  .  .  For  one,  I  resolve,  Mr.  Chair- 
man, to  do  more  for  it  than  I  have  done 
heretofore,  and  I  hope  we  shall  all  make 
that  resolution." 

It  was  on  the  same  occasion,  the  even- 


ROBERT  C.   WINTHROP.  1 45 

ing  of  April  27,  185 1,  that  Hon.  Robert  C. 
Winthrop,  a  classmate  at  Harvard  of  Mr. 
Barnard,  followed  Mr.  King  in  an  address, 
a  part  of  which  is  here  quoted :  — 

"  I  need  not  assure  you  that  I  have  lis- 
tened with  the  deepest  interest  to  the  ac- 
count which  the  report  has  given  of  the 
progress  and  prospects  of  this  institution. 
No  man,  indeed,  who  has  a  heart  within 
his  bosom  —  a  heart  either  for  the  welfare 
of  man  or  for  the  glory  of  God  —  could 
have  listened  to  that  account  without  emo- 
tions deeper  than  he  could  readily  find 
words  to  express.  For  myself,  certainly, 
I  know  of  few  things  better  calculated  to 
touch  and  thrill  the  inmost  susceptibili- 
ties of  a  Christian  soul  than  the  precise 
pictures  presented  to  us  in  this  paper ;  the 
picture  of  so  many  young  children,  rescued 
from  the  snares  of  ignorance,  idleness,  and 
vice;  snatched,  many  of  them,  as  brands 
from  the  burning,  and  trained  up  to  habits 
of  industry,  to  the  love  of  truth,  to  the 
practice  of  virtue,  to  the  knowledge  and 
praise  of  God.  And  I  may  be  permitted 
to  add,  that  I  know  of  no  person  who  has 
secured   for   himself   a  prouder   or   more 


146       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

enviable  distinction  than  one  who,  having 
drawn  such  a  picture  with  fidelity,  and 
having  gracefully  and  modestly  held  it  up 
to  the  public  view,  can  say  with  truth, 
'  There  are  the  fruits  of  my  labors ;  this  is 
the  account  of  my  stewardship.' 

"  It  is  now,  I  think,  not  far  from  a  quar- 
ter of  a  century  since  your  secretary  and 
myself,  with  at  least  one  other  of  those 
whom  I  have  seen  at  my  side  this  even- 
ing, having  finished  our  collegiate  course, 
left  the  walls  of  the  neighboring  University 
together.  We  had  many  classmates  and 
common  friends,  who  were  soon  scattered 
along  the  various  paths  of  life  and  in  vari- 
ous parts  of  the  country.  Some  of  them, 
indeed,  of  the  richest  promise,  were  struck 
down  at  the  very  threshold  of  their  career, 
and  others  of  them  have  since  fallen  in 
more  advanced  stages  of  manhood ;  but 
the  greater  part  have  remained  to  this  day, 
and  not  a  few  have  reached  high  degrees 
of  preferment  in  social,  literary,  or  political 
life.  I  hazard  nothing,  however,  in  saying 
that  there  is  not  one  of  them  who  could 
have  been  present  here  this  evening  and 
listened  to  the  account  which  my  friend 


ROBERT  C    WTNTHROP.  1 47 

has  given  of  the  work  to  which  he  has  so 
successfully  devoted  himself,  without  feel- 
ing the  comparative  worthlessness  of  his 
own  pursuits,  or  without  uniting  with  me 
in  admitting  that  while  so  many  of  us  have 
been  careful  and  cumbered  about  many 
things,  our  brother  has  chosen  that  good 
part  which  shall  not  be  taken  away  from 
him.  .  .  . 

"  I  think  it  was  related  of  an  old  philos- 
opher that,  on  going  into  a  schoolhouse 
and  seeing  a  band  of  ill-mannered  and  ill- 
behaved  boys,  instead  of  finding  fault  with 
the  boys  themselves,  he  inflicted  a  severe 
chastisement  upon  the  master.  This  was 
rather  a  rough  proceeding  for  a  philoso- 
pher, but  it  was  a  forcible  illustration  of  a 
true  principle.  If  the  boys  in  our  land  are 
ill-mannered  and  ill-behaved,  it  is  the  fault 
of  their  parents  and  teachers.  It  was  only 
this  very  afternoon  that  the  services  of  the 
sanctuary  which  I  attended  were  disturbed 
by  the  crash  of  a  window,  broken  undoubt- 
edly by  one  of  those  truant  and  trouble- 
some boys  which  the  secretary  has  men- 
tioned in  his  report.  My  first  feeling  at 
this  incident  was  one  of  indignation  at  the 


148       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

act  of  the  boy,  and  of  a  wish  that  he  might 
be  caught  and  punished ;  but  my  second 
sober  thought  was  one  of  pity  for  the  boy, 
and  of  regret,  I  had  almost  said  indigna- 
tion, that  there  were  not  more  of  these 
Warren  Street  Chapels  in  our  city,  into 
which  boys  of  this  character  might  be 
brought,  and  where  they  might  be  trained 
up  under  the  magical  influence  of  brother 
Barnard,  or  others  like  him,  to  be  devout 
worshipers  within  the  temple,  instead  of 
rude  rioters  without." 

It  was  an  often  repeated  saying  of  The- 
odore Parker,  "  I  don't  believe  a  bit  in 
waiting  till  a  good  man  or  a  bad  man  is 
dead,  before  saying  a  word  in  his  praise  or 
condemnation.  I  mean  to  speak  right  out 
in  meeting  when  I  see  one  of  them  before 
me!  The  good  man  needs  the  hearty 
flesh  and  blood  congratulations  of  his  fel- 
lows as  he  goes  along."  On  more  than 
one  public  occasion  Parker  acted  on  this 
conviction  with  startling  effect ;  as  when, 
for  example,  at  the  funeral  service  of  Cal- 
vin Whiting,  after  saying,  "  I  have  seen 
many  of  the  philanthropists  of  this  country 
and  of  Europe,  and   I  never  saw  one  in 


•  ROBERT  C.    WINTHROP.  1 49 

whom  philanthropy  bore  so  large  a  pro- 
portion to  the  whole  nature  as  in  him,"  he 
suddenly  turned  round  and  added  :  "  Now 
that  he  has  ceased  to  be  mortal,  I  know  of 
only  one  other  man  whom  the  needy  of  the 
city  would  miss  so  much,  and  he  sits  here 
[pointing  straight  at  Charles  F.  Barnard]. 
One  was  the  right  hand,  the  other  the  left, 
—  and  I  know  not  which  was  the  stronger." 
Still  later  on,  in  a  sermon  on  the  power 
of  education  and  of  the  strength  of  the  in- 
fluence exerted  by  the  circumstances  in 
which  the  soul  is  placed,  Theodore  Parker 
again  bore  a  like  testimony  :  "  The  cradle 
is  the  place  where  we  should  start  to  move 
the  world,  and  education  is  the  Archimedes 
for  that  universal  lift.  Take  a  single  ex- 
ample! Look  at  the  history  of  Warren 
Street  Chapel  in  this  town,  for  the  past  five 
and  twenty  years.  .  .  .  How  many  hun- 
dreds, how  many  thousands,  are  now  hon- 
orable, noble,  heavenly  minded  men  and 
women,  simply  because  they  were  trans- 
ferred from  the  cold,  bleak  atmosphere  of 
the  street,  where  temptation  lay  in  wait  to 
destroy  them,  and  set  in  this  greenhouse 
of  souls,  where  they  ripened  and  blossomed 
into  fragrant  flowers  !  " 


XYI. 

THE    FLORAL    PROCESSIONS. 

As  the  work  of  Warren  Street  Chapel 
went  on  year  by  year,  its  leader  and  his 
zealous  helpers  were  cheered  to  the  soul  at 
seeing  idea  after  idea  they  had  first  origi- 
nated and  then  faithfully  illustrated,  taken 
up  by  the  public  at  large.  This  held 
good,  as  already  has  been  stated,  of  sing- 
ing in  the  public  schools,  of  the  teaching 
of  sewing,  of  the  children's  civic  festivals 
in  Music  Hall,  of  the  later  incorporation 
of  schools  of  art  and  design  into  the  sys- 
tem of  public  instruction,  and  of  the  inau- 
guration at  the  city  expense  of  evening 
schools  for  those  who  had  enjoyed  no  early 
opportunities. 

Out  of  this  last  humane  enterprise  of 
Mr.  Barnard  was  it  further  that  grew,  as 
direct  result,  the  praiseworthy  action  taken 
by  the  Old  South  Church  in  building  and 
equipping  Chambers  Street  Chapel,  where, 


THE  FLORAL   PROCESSIONS.  151 

with  the  wealth  at  the  command  of  so  rich 
a  corporation,  it  became  possible  to  carry- 
on  operations  upon  a  scale  to  which  the 
limited  resources  of  Warren  Street  could 
make  no  pretension.  Yet  in  after  years, 
during  the  civil  war,  Rev.  J.  M.  Manning 
gratefully  wrote  home  from  Camp  Rogers, 
near  Newbern,  N.  C. :  "  May  Chambers 
Street  Chapel  long  stand  a  testimony  that 
the  funds  of  the  Old  South  Society  have 
been  wisely,  nobly,  and  disinterestedly  ex- 
pended ;  and  may  its  friends  never  forget 
their  indebtedness  to  the  Rev.  Mr.  Bar- 
nard of  Warren  Street  Chapel,  whose  ex- 
cellent institution  first  suggested  the  idea 
of  a  similar  charity  in  the  west  part  of  the 
city." 

Heartily  as  Mr.  Barnard  rejoiced  over 
the  abundant  means  at  the  disposal  of  the 
Old  South  in  carrying  out  a  work  so  dear 
to  his  own  heart,  he  could  not  but  at  times 
reflect  with  pain  on  the  pecuniary  hin- 
drances that  had  so  sorely  beset  him 
throughout  his  long  career.  His  was  the 
fate  of  most  pioneers.  Still,  something 
pathetic  is  there  in  the  words  with  which, 
in  his  old  age,  he  gave  expression  to  this 


152       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

feeling  in  the  columns  of  the  "  Christian 
Register:"  "In  truth,  we  share,  in  our 
sense  of  satisfaction  and  entire  approval  at 
least,  in  the  whole  pecuniary  prospects  of 
Chambers  Street.  The  embarrassments, 
debts,  and  deficiencies  of  more  than  thirty- 
two  years  in  the  field  occur  to  us  with 
force  and  chastened  delight  as  we  observe 
the  different  and  better  fortune  of  our 
noble  compeer.  Have  we  not  been  strug- 
gling on  in  the  hope  that,  sooner  or  later, 
the  undertaking  would  justify  any  expen- 
diture in  its  behalf }  .  ,  ,  We  know  of  no 
martyrdom  to  compare  with  that  which 
waits  upon  the  sight  of  human  suffering 
without  adequate  and  perpetual  means  in 
one's  hands  for  its  relief.  .  .  .  The  Old 
South  is  rich,  to  be  sure.  So  are  other 
churches,  other  communities  that  we  might 
name." 

One  other  enterprise  in  which  Cham- 
bers Street  Chapel  freely  acknowledged  its 
debt  of  obligation  to  the  initiative  set  by 
Warren  Street  was  that  of  carrying  on  va- 
cation schools,  for  a  part  of  each  day,  dur- 
ing the  summer  intermission  of  the  public 
schools.     At  first  sight  it  might  appear  a 


THE   FLORAL  PROCESSIONS.  I  53 

contradiction  that  such  a  lover  of  freedom 
and  joy  for  children  as  Mr.  Barnard  should 
have  the  heart  to  shut  up  poor  little  crea- 
tures in  schoolrooms  during  the  torrid 
heats  of  an  American  summer.  Neither 
would  it  be  a  matter  for  grave  reprehension 
if  even  a  New  England  volunteer  con- 
science should  finally  feel  it  the  last  straw 
on  the  overladen  camel's  back,  and  go  out 
on  a  moral  strike,  when  summoned,  after 
the  long  strain  of  the  winter,  to  reenlist 
for  the  dogdays  in  such  trying  service  as 
this.  But  even  here  Mr.  Barnard  found 
willing  and  steadfast  helpers.  Clearly 
enough  he  distinguished  that,  priceless  as 
long  vacations  are  for  children  who  can  be 
by  the  seashore  or  in  the  country,  and 
who  there  are  carefully  looked  after  and 
provided  with  innocent  recreation,  none 
the  less  these  same  vacations  are  to  the 
children  of  the  poor,  free  to  roam  at  will 
through  the  city  streets,  an  exposure  to  the 
worst  temptations,  as  well  as  a  source  of 
largely  increased  care  and  anxiety  to  their 
parents.  Attracted  for  half  the  day  into 
a  school  where  they  are  surrounded  with 
good   influences,  exercised   only  in  slight 


154       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

tasks,  and  at  intervals  pleasantly  amused, 
they  really  enjoy  the  vacation  far  better, 
while  sensible  relief  is  extended  to  their 
fathers  and  mothers. 

As  far  back  as  the  year  1842,  a  charming 
sight  was  to  be  witnessed  on  the  Fourth 
of  July  on  Boston  Common,  in  the  shape 
of  tables  profusely  loaded  with  flowers  and 
attended  by  pretty  little  white-robed  girls 
with  floral  wreaths  on  their  heads,  and  by 
courteous  little  boys, —  not  so  pretty,  per- 
haps, but  attired  in  the  same  festal  way, 
and  making  up  in  cordial  smiles  what  they 
lacked  in  beauty.  These  were  Warren 
Street  Chapel  children,  who  had  already 
made  alliances  with  the  children  of  a  large 
number  of  Sunday-schools  in  the  country 
to  send  them  from  all  quarters  contribu- 
tions of  flowers,  to  be  sold  for  the  benefit 
of  the  institution.  Out  of  this  germ  grew 
what  for  many  years  was  one  of  the  most 
characteristic  features,  —  as  truly  by  far 
the  most  beautiful,  —  of  the  celebrations 
of  the  Fourth  of  July  in  Boston,  —  the 
Floral  Processions. 

If  there  has  been  any  one  thing  that  at 
times  has  disposed  even  the  most  patriotic 


THE  FLORAL   PROCESSIONS.  I  55 

Americans  to  regret  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  and  to  deplore  the  severance 
of  the  ties  that  once  bound  us  to  the  mo- 
ther country,  it  has  lain  in  the  noisy  vul- 
garity with  which  the  glories  of  the  Fourth 
of  July  have  ordinarily  been  commemo- 
rated. "  A  man's  foes  shall  be  they  of  his 
own  household."  The  day,  alike  in  present 
actuality,  in  gloomy  retrospect,  and  in  bod- 
ing anticipation,  had  long  been  made  a 
terror,  not  to  the  British  w^ho  three  thou- 
sand miles  away  were  out  of  sound  of  the 
banging  of  cannon,  the  clang  of  cracked 
bells,  the  ceaseless  sputter  and  fusillade  of 
fire-crackers,  but  to  the  lineal  descend- 
ants of  Adams  and  Jefferson  and  Prescott 
and  Warren,  and  all  their  compeers  who 
shed  their  blood  or  their  speeches  for  what 
they  innocently  believed  would  entail  bless- 
ing on  their  posterity.  Now,  against  fire- 
crackers exploded  in  due  moderation, — 
indeed,  with  this  proviso,  they  shared 
the  approbation  even  of  so  sober  and  well- 
regulated  a  mind  as  that  of  Confucius  in 
China, —  nothing  of  course  can  fairly  be 
objected.  But  ah,  in  their  Fourth  of  July 
immoderation,  what  wear  and  tear  of  nerves 
they  entail  before  nightfall ! 


156       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

Why  can  we  not  have  ways  of  celebrat- 
ing the  day  that  are  beautiful  in  themselves, 
artistic  and  refining  in  their  influence  ? 
This  was  Mr.  Barnard's  constant  thought. 
What  so  beautiful  after  all  as  troops  of 
children  with  wreaths  and  garlands  and 
banners,  the  one  of  whom  shall  personate 
Flora,  and  another  Ceres,  and  another 
Pomona?  What  so  happy  a  way  of  their 
spending  the  day  as  to  gather  them  in  a 
beautiful  garden,  where  selected  bands  of 
them  may  charm  all  on-lookers  with  grace- 
ful floral  dances,  and  where  sports  in  the 
way  of  swinging  and  archery  shall  be  free 
to  all  ? 

Under  the  impulse  of  this  idea  was  it 
that  the  initial  sale  of  flowers  on  the 
Common  grew  rapidly  into  those  floral 
processions  of  the  Warren  Street  children 
that  for  years  attracted  into  the  city  crowds 
of  delighted  spectators.  These  processions 
furnished  to  the  rather  prosaic  Boston  of 
their  day  an  entirely  novel  spectacle ;  an 
object  lesson  at  once  artistic,  and  yet  voic- 
ing a  loving  plea  for  beauty  and  joy  as  the 
rightful  atmosphere  of  childhood,  such  as 
carried  with  it  its  own  irresistible  evidence. 


THE  FLORAL  PROCESSIONS.         157 

The  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  happy- 
children  wreathed  with  flowers  and  bear- 
ing flowers ;  the  charming  variety  of  the 
characters  personated ;  the  moss-covered, 
flower-starred  cars  on  which  some  were 
recHning  while  others  stood  waving  pretty 
banners ;  the  songs  and  choruses  with 
which  the  air  rang  as  they  marched  along ; 
the  graceful  dances  engaged  in  when  they 
reached  the  inclosure  which  now  consti- 
tutes the  Public  Garden,  and  afterwards 
the  sale  of  flowers  and  ices  at  the  hands  of 
charming  little  fairies,  —  was  not  this  after 
all  something  quite  as  patriotic,  quite  as 
refining  and  elevating,  as  the  perpetual 
banging  of  fire-crackers?  At  any  rate, 
thousands  were  converted  to  the  faith  that 
it  was. 

Now  as  at  last,  anniversary  after  anni- 
versary, Mr.  Barnard  stood  in  the  midst  of 
this  scene  of  beauty,  receiving  delighted 
congratulations  on  every  side,  the  "  dancing 
parson,"  as  he  had  once  been  contemptu- 
ously styled,  enjoyed  his  poetic  revenge. 
"  If  you  ask  for  the  only  revenge  I  crave, 
look  around  you ! "  would  have  been  no 
idle  travesty   of   Sir   Christopher  Wren  s 


158       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

memorial  in  St.  Paul's.  Yet  all  along  had 
Mr.  Barnard  been  encouraged  by  many  of 
the  wisest  and  most  humane  of  Boston's 
citizens,  of  one  of  whom  he  gratefully 
recorded:  "Hon.  Theodore  Lyman  never 
met  me,  for  years  before  his  death,  with- 
out a  word  of  faith  and  encouragement 
in  relation  to  entertainments  for  the 
young.  'We  have  land,  enterprise,  in- 
dustry, wealth,  everything  in  America,'  he 
would  say ;  '  all  we  want  is  more  happiness. 
Our  intelligence  and  virtue  might  be  made 
to  grow  under  the  proper  pursuit  of  hap- 
piness.' "  Was  there,  then,  anything  but 
justifiable  exultation  in  the  exclamation 
with  which,  in  one  of  his  reports,  Mr.  Bar- 
nard broke  out  ?  —  "  Was  it  a  boy's  vain 
dream,  a  young  man's  idle  fancy,  when  the 
preaching  of  Channing,  the  influence  of 
Ware,  the  example  of  Tuckerman  filled  me 
beforehand  with  the  idea,  the  yearnings, 
the  hope  of  all  this  t  Have  I  walked  more 
than  half  my  days  in  a  cloud?  I  speak 
openly.  Personal  questions  are  out  of 
sight.  We  are  but  the  tools  and  servants 
of  a  higher  power.  Circumstances  evolve, 
and,  controlled  by  Heaven  alone,  support, 
attend,  and  crown  the  end." 


THE  FLORAL  PROCESSIONS.  I  59 

Of  course  the  work  entailed,  in  the  prep- 
arations for  these  floral  processions  of 
seven  or  eight  hundred  children,  upon  the 
teachers  and  friends  of  the  chapel  was 
enormous.  Volunteers  by  scores  had  to 
be  called  for  from  other  religious  societies. 
For  weeks,  moreover,  before  the  appointed 
day,  the  children  themselves  were  scouring 
the  surrounding  country  for  mosses  and 
evergreens,  while,  later  on,  enormous  con- 
tributions of  flowers  came  pouring  in  from 
their  little  mates  in  out-of-town  parishes, 
all  heartily  enlisted  in  the  resolve  that  the 
church  "  of  the  children,  for  the  children, 
and  by  the  children,  should  not  perish 
from  the  earth." 

To  sustain  the  originality  and  charm  of 
the  spectacle,  fresh  features  of  interest  and 
beauty  had  yearly  to  be  added.  So  strong, 
however,  was  the  hold  the  exhibition  had 
taken  on  the  public  mind  that  at  last  the 
city  government  —  in  this  final  instance  as 
in  so  many  another,  with  regard  to  ideas 
originated  in  the  chapel  —  stepped  in  with 
a  proposition  that,  while  remaining  still 
under  the  same  control,  the  festival  should 
be  raised  to  the  rank  of  a  civic  one,  due 


l6o      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

municipal  appropriations  being  voted.  The 
invitation  was  promptly  accepted.  Mr. 
Barnard  and  his  teachers  took  the  Public 
Garden  ;  a  mammoth  tent,  with  a  flooring 
capable  of  accommodating  i,ooo  children 
while  dancing,  was  set  up ;  the  Germania 
Orchestra  was  engaged  for  the  music; 
swings,  grace-hoops,  and  merry-go-rounds 
were  freely  provided ;  twelve  of  the  chapel 
children  at  different  hours  performed  the 
"  French  Peasants'  Dance ;  "  while  some 
30,000  tickets  were  distributed  among  the 
pupils  of  the  public  schools  in  Boston  and 
the  adjoining  towns.  By  the  date  of  1858, 
it  is  estimated  that  at  least  60,000  persons 
were  present  at  the  festival. 

It  had  now  become  clear  that  the  in- 
tended lesson  had  been  sufflciently  set,  — 
the  lesson  of  substituting  beautiful  and  re- 
fining ways  of  celebrating  the  Fourth  of 
July  for  the  old  rude  and  barbaric  ones. 
Beginning  in  an  unobtrusive  way,  the 
movement  had  finally  swollen  to  such  pro- 
portions as  to  be  beyond  the  organizing 
capacity  of  the  little  band  of  devoted  men 
and  women  who  had  for  many  years  given 
their  time  and  strength  to  it.     The  floral 


THE  FLORAL  PROCESSIONS.         i6l 

processions  were  accordingly  abandoned 
by  them ;  thenceforth  surviving  in  the 
Music  Hall  and  similar  festivities  for  chil- 
dren, conducted  under  the  auspices  of  a 
thoroughly  converted  city  government. 

In  describing  these  floral  processions, 
allusion  more  than  once  has  been  made  to 
the  Boston  Public  Garden,  where  the  chil- 
dren were  assembled.  An  entirely  wrong 
impression  would  be  left,  however,  did  this 
reference  call  up  before  the  mind's  eye  the 
beautiful  park  of  to-day  with  its  blaze  of 
tulips  and  fragrance  of  hyacinths,  its  grace- 
ful trees  and  wealth  of  flowering  shrubs, 
its  lake  and  swan-boats  laden  with  merry 
children.  When  first  Mr.  Barnard  set  eye 
on  the  spot  as  a  convenient  place  for  the 
rendezvous  of  his  boys  and  girls,  it  was  a 
rude,  unfenced,  unplanted  stretch  of  half 
marsh-land,  the  property  of  the  city,  but 
already  surveyed  and  plotted  into  house- 
lots  in  view  of  their  ultimate  sale.  With 
prophetic  foresight  Mr.  Barnard  grasped 
from  the  outset  its  capabilities  for  a  public 
garden  as  an  addition  to  the  Common, — 
not,  indeed,  a  simple  repetition  and  exten- 
sion of  the  Common,  with  its  grass  and 


1 62       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

shadowing  elms,  but,  in  the  finer  sense  of 
the  word,  a  garden,  planted  with  the  rich- 
est variety  of  flowering  shrubs,  its  sward 
lit  up  with  beds  of  gorgeous  color,  and  em- 
bracing a  conservatory  for  the  cultivation 
of  the  tenderer  exotics. 

Now,  to  a  prudent  city  government  and 
to  many  leading  members  of  a  community 
highly  enlightened  in  matters  of  real  estate, 
a  proposition  like  this  was  regarded  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  dry  light  as  the  "  breaking 
of  the  alabaster  box  of  precious  perfume  " 
in  the  days  of  Scripture.  "  To  what  pur- 
pose is  this  waste } "  Stretched  out,  as 
Boston  then  was,  on  a  narrow  peninsula, 
and  before  the  days  when  the  enormous 
growth  of  railway  facilities  revealed  the 
feasibility  of  dumping  the  Brighton  hills 
into  the  water  and  flats  of  the  Back  Bay, 
and  thus  of  creating  immense  areas  of  new- 
made  land,  the  bare  idea  of  sacrificing  the 
solid  revenue  to  be  derived  from  blocks  of 
houses  to  the  physical  and  aesthetic  rev- 
enue accruing  from  breathing  sweet  air 
and  smelling  flowers  seemed  the  wildest 
of  vagaries.  None  the  less,  Mr.  Barnard 
had  the  obstinacy  of   his  own  sublimely 


THE  FLORAL   PROCESSIONS.  163 

impracticable  convictions.  Cut  up  into 
house-lots  and  covered  with  brick  and  mor- 
tar, that  tract  of  land  —  already  shining 
in  his  mind's  eye  in  the  vista  of  a  glorified 
future  —  should  not  be,  if  there  was  any 
power  in  him  to  help  it. 

Indefatigably,  therefore,  did  he  now  work 
the  press,  writing  article  after  article  in  de- 
scription of  the  public  gardens  of  Europe, 
and  quoting  the  testimonials  of  physicians, 
mayors,  naturalists,  and  police  commission- 
ers to  their  value  to  the  public  health, 
morals,  education,  and  opportunities  for 
innocent  recreation.  Associating  himself 
with  the  most  widely  traveled,  or,  by  na- 
ture, beauty-craving  of  Boston's  citizens, 
again  and  again  was  the  city  government 
memorialized  on  the  subject. 

More  than  all,  Mr.  Barnard  finally  pro- 
ceeded to  a  practically  aggressive  step, 
namely,  to  the  exercise,  in  a  purely  aes- 
thetic spirit,  of  what  was  then  —  in  the 
language  of  rough  Western  humor  —  char- 
acterized as  "squatter  sovereign  right." 
Getting  permission  to  have  the  tract  sur- 
rounded by  a  plain  wood  fence,  he  at 
once  went  on  to  build  a  conservatory  for 
the  public  sale  of  flowers,  the  first  Boston 


164      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

had  ever  known.  In  this  conservatory  he 
beheld  the  ideal  "  squatter  sovereign," 
who  was  resolutely  to  plant  himself  right 
there,  and  hold  on  till  he  should  have  es- 
tablished in  the  taste  and  delight  of  the 
public  so  strong  a  proprietary  charm  that 
it  would  never  suffer  him  to  be  ejected. 
His  own  father  furnished  the  money  for 
the  conservatory,  and  was  to  get  the  ample 
pecuniary  returns  the  son  saw  in  the  near 
millennium,  out  of  the  profits  from  the  sale 
of  flowers. 

Of  course  there  never  were  any  profits, 
at  least  of  exchangeable  value  on  State 
Street.  Pioneer  conservatories,  like  pio- 
neer missionaries,  have  to  "do  good  and 
lend,  hoping  for  nothing  "  except  the  "  ex- 
ceeding great  reward  "  of  so  breathing 
abroad  the  fragrance  of  the  grace  of  God 
that  some  day  a  grateful  succeeding  gen- 
eration will  repent  as  sincerely  as  the 
Scotch  over  poor  Robbie  Burns,  that, 
before  he  actually  died,  they  did  not  give 
him  enough  to  keep  alive  on.  In  a  few 
years,  the  Barnard  conservatory  died,  too, 
of  poetic  asphyxia.  But  it  rose  again  out 
of  the  hearts  it  had  converted,  and  stands 
to-day,  in  the  resurrection  to  a  larger  and 


THE  FLORAL  PROCESSIONS.         165 

more  bountiful  life,  in  the  midst  of  that 
charming  bit  of  paradise  in  which  it  began 
its  humble  swamp  existence.  Many  are 
the  still  surviving  citizens  of  Boston,  famil- 
iar with  the  history  of  the  matter  from  the 
start  to  the  finish,  who  insist  that,  more 
than  to  all  others,  Boston  owes  its  beau- 
tiful Public  Garden  to  the  foresight,  the 
indomitable  persistence,  and  the  personal 
audacity  of  Charles  Francis  Barnard.  It 
was  a  case  —  like  so  many  others  illus- 
trated by  the  same  man  —  in  which  pre- 
mature real  estate  had  first  to  lose  its  life 
to  find  it  again  in  ideal  estate.  In  the 
full  knowledge  of  all  this  was  it  that 
Thomas  W.  Parsons,  the  translator  of 
Dante,  wrote  his  tribute  :  — 

*'  Rightly  call  it  Barnard's  Garden  ; 
Without  him  it  had  not  been  ; 
He  no  statue  needs,  —  a  pardon 
Hardly,  —  for  he  had  no  sin. 
Of  a  handsome  race,  if  homely, 
His  best  beauty  is  within. 

"  Let  him  have  no  more  memorial 
Than  the  flowers  he  loves  so  well, 
As  full  many  a  blooming  oriel, 
Many  lilied  windows  tell ; 
Gentle  Charles,  thy  sweet  remembrance 
Should  be  hyacinths,  asphodel ! " 


XVII. 

OLD   CHAPEL   BOYS. 

The  story  of  the  life  and  work  of 
Charles  Francis  Barnard,  as  embodied  in 
the  pride  and  joy  of  his  heart,  the  Warren 
Street  Chapel,  is  now  mainly  told.  All 
along  it  has  seemed  better  to  treat  the 
subject,  not  in  simple  chronological  order, 
but  rather  in  the  way  of  taking  up  pro- 
ject after  project  as  each  originated  in  its 
author's  fertile  brain  and  glowing  heart, 
and  then  going  on  with  it  to  its  final  out- 
come. Thus  alone  was  it  possible  to  con- 
front with  hard  practical  reality  the  ideal 
Jacob's  dream,  in  which  the  enthusiastic 
youth  saw  in  vision  "  a  ladder  set  up  on 
the  earth,  and  the  top  of  it  reached  to 
heaven,  and  behold  the  angels  of  God  as- 
cending and  descending  on  it." 

Indeed,  in  an  unbroken  dream,  —  as 
certain  practical  minds  that  boast  them- 
selves the  only  wide  awake  would  call  it, 


OLD   CHAPEL  BOYS.  167 

—  did  alike  the  ardent  youth  and  toiling 
man  of  maturity  ever  live,  a  glorifying 
dream  that  cast  on  the  homeliest  realities 
the  light  that  never  was  on  land  or  sea. 
Of  how  many  of  the  angels  of  God  he 
saw  ascending  and  descending  on  the 
shining  ladder,  would  the  average  hard- 
headed  observer  have  said,  "  Why,  man, 
these  are  but  so  many  knee -patched, 
penny  -  pitching  wharf  boys,  or  so  many 
frowzy-headed,  freckle-faced.  Broad  Street 
girls ! "  But  see  these  boys  and  girls 
twenty  years  later,  and  read  the  letters  of 
thanks  that  poured  in  on  their  dear  old 
pastor  from  all  quarters  of  America,  yes, 
and  from  far  off  China  and  India,  and  one 
would  feel  forced  to  revise  his  criterion  of 
inborn  capacity  for  recognizing  and  enter- 
taining angels  unawares. 

Take  a  specimen  of  these  letters,  writ- 
ten forty  years  later  by  a  man  who  had 
achieved  wealth  and  honorable  position, 
and  in  whom  the  germ  of  the  love  of 
beauty  his  old  pastor  had  been  so  eager  to 
foster  had  developed  into  a  passion  that 
resulted  in  one  of  the  rich  art  collections 
of  New  York ;  and  see  how  vivid  are  the 


1 68       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

memories  of  the  dear  old  times  in  Warren 
Street.  The  letter  —  only  one  out  of  hun- 
dreds like  in  strain  —  was  addressed  to 
Samuel  Weltch,  Esq.,  of  Jamaica  Plain, 
Mass.,  once  the  teacher  and  afterwards 
the  life-long  friend  of  the  writer :  — 

Dear  Sam,  —  I  want  always  to  continue 
to  call  you  "  Sam,"  as,  in  our  younger 
days,  I  never  knew  you  by  any  other 
name.  Cousin  Eber  brightens  our  dinner- 
table  every  Tuesday  evening,  and  we  have 
many  a  good  talk  about  old  times,  espe- 
cially about  the  old  chapel  times.  A  few 
weeks  since  he  mentioned  that  another 
anniversary  was  coming  about.  How 
quickly  they  get  round  now ! 

In  writing,  I  really  did  want  to  go  back 
to  the  beginning  of  the  thing,  away  to 
the  time  when  our  good  old  parson,  in 
those  days  the  young,  handsome,  black- 
haired  student,  espied,  in  his  walk  up 
Warren  Street  one  afternoon,  Jim  Black, 
myself,  and  two  or  three  other  little  fel- 
lows sitting  on  the  curb.  He  stopped  and 
had  a  pleasant  word  with  us.  He  then 
asked  if  we  would  like  to  join  his  Sunday- 


OLD   CHAPEL  BOYS.  169 

school  and  chapel  which  he  was  just  start- 
ing. It  was  forty  years  ago.  And  I  re- 
member how  I  ran  home  and  told  my 
mother  that  a  real  Beacon  Street  man  had 
been  talking  to  me  (you  know  that  you 
and  I  did  not  lay  claim  to  much  blue 
blood),  and  wanted  me  to  join  his  Sunday- 
school.  After  much  solicitation  she  con- 
sented, and  I  went  to  the  chapel  Sunday- 
school  then  held  in  Hollis  Street  Church, 
and  when  we  arrived  we  all  felt  it  was  our 
church,  ours,  boys  and  girls  that  we  were. 
There  we  heard  sermons  we  could  u^ider- 
stand,  and  singing  sweeter  than  any  we 
have  since  heard,  by  Miss  Anna  Stone, 
the  Emmons  girls,  the  Faxon  boys,  Gus 
Dix,  Gil  Clark,  and  the  others. 

How  vividly  I  recall  the  incidents  of 
the  morning  of  the  laying  of  the  corner- 
stone,—  rather  a  chilly  morning,  you  re- 
member. My  woolen  pants  were  patched, 
but  I  thought  I  must  make  a  good  appear- 
ance on  that  occasion,  so  I  drew  over  them 
a  pair  of  white  pants  (a  little  out  of  season, 
perhaps,  but  the  best  I  could  do).  So  we 
watched  the  building  from  corner-stone  to 
roof,  until  it  was  dedicated  and  opened. 


lyo      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

I  wanted  to  write  you  about  the  good 
people  we  met  there,  the  best  people  of 
Boston,  the  Misses  Everett,  their  brothers, 
the  Williams  family,  Mrs.  Gammage  and 
her  two  devoted  daughters,  Miss  Mendum, 
Miss  Shattuck,  the  Misses  Pratt,  and  that 
loveliest  of  them  all  (she  never  dreamed 
how  lovely  she  was !),  our  dear  old  Aunt 
Judith  Bazin,  with  her  sisters. 

I  wish  I  had  the  ability  to  portray  wor- 
thily all  Aunt  Judith's  saintly  virtues. 
And  think  of  the  cultivated  and  scholarly 
gentlemen  we  met  in  those  days.  I  well 
remember  whom  I  first  met  in  the  class 
alcoves  of  the  upper  room,  Messrs.  Jarvis, 
Bowditch,  Dupee,  Billings,  Vose,  Call, 
occasionally  Dr.  Flagg.  And  later  the 
class  formed  by  James  M.  Barnard,  when 
we  had  many  of  us  almost  become  men. 
No  man  ever  gave  more  earnest  work  to 
a  good  cause  than  did  he,  and  few  have 
seen  more  gratifying  results. 

Of  course  I  cannot  forget  a  single  one 
of  the  early  boys  who  have  since  grown 
up  to  manhood.  Some  of  them,  you  know, 
have  arrived  at  honorable  distinction ; 
many  have  done  well  in  a  more  humble 


OLD   CHAPEL  BOYS.  171 

way ;  all,  I  think,  have  become  good,  hon- 
est citizens.  And  who  ever  heard,  before 
the  existence  of  the  chapel,  of  those  happy 
country  excursions  which  are  now  so  gen- 
eral, and  of  the  elegant  floral  processions  ? 
What  a  feature  they  were  on  the  Fourth 
of  July !  And  the  merry  games  we  used 
to  have  in  the  chapel  parlors !  I  dare  say 
you  don't  forget  them !  Could  you  now 
go  through  the  performance  of  the  Grand 
Mufti  ? 

I  cannot  close  without  expressing  to 
you  and  your  Siamese  twin,  Tom  Vose, 
the  great  admiration  I  feel  for  your  life- 
long and  earnest  participation  in  this  good 
work  of  developing  and  elevating  the 
"young  idea."  You  two  and  Mr.  Emmons 
made  a  self-sacrificing  trio  of  philanthro- 
pists, whom  many  a  boy  and  girl  has  called 
"  blessed,"  as  they  loomed  up  into  matu- 
rity. I  question,  my  dear  Sam,  if  any  seed 
of  Christianity  was  ever  planted  which  has 
been  more  prolific  of  precious  results  than 
the  Warren  Street  Chapel. 

As  ever  yours. 

One  of  the  Old  Chapel  Boys, 

James  F.  Drummond. 


172       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

Kindred  in  spirit  with  the  tone  of  this 
letter,  as  revealing  the  sentiment  ever  kept 
warm  in  the  hearts  of  its  pupils  toward 
their  dear  old  chapel  and  its  presiding 
genius,  an  anecdote  cited  by  Rev.  William 
R.  Alger,  from  the  far-away  gold-fever 
days  of  California,  has  a  touching  interest. 
"  Far  off  into  the  setting  sun,  where  the 
Californian  gold  mines  lie,  on  the  Fourth 
of  July,  behold  two  young  men  reclining 
upon  the  grass.  One  says,  *  What  do  you 
think  they  are  doing  at  the  chapel  now.^*' 
The  other,  not  recognizing  an  old  fellow 
pupil  within  these  walls  (in  which  I  am 
addressing  you  now),  but  still  perceiving  the 
unmistakable  reference,  exclaims,  'What 
do  you  know  about  the  chapel  ?  '  *  You 
come  to  my  tent  and  see,'  continues  the 
first.  Immediately  obeying,  he  finds  pinned 
up  over  the  sleeping-blanket  a  picture  of  a 
portion  of  this  room,  given  the  other  when 
he  left  by  one  of  the  teachers  here.  It  was 
as  fit  and  efficacious  a  stimulant,  shrine, 
and  guardian,  I  venture  to  say,  as  any  one 
of  those  wooden  images  of  the  Virgin,  or 
leaden  saints,  which  the  papal  peasants  or 
the  serfs  of  the  Greek  Church  carry  with 


OLD   CHAPEL  BOYS.  173 

them  as  amulets,  or  install  in  their  houses 
as  patron  angels." 

If,  therefore,  one  were  asked  to  sum  up 
in  a  single  phrase  what  was  the  greatest 
and  most  fruitful  of  all  the  object  lessons 
set  by  Warren  Street  Chapel  and  its  great- 
hearted founder,  it  would  be  "the  lesson 
of  faith  in  the  Divine  Hospitality." 
Truly,  of  all  the  mistakes  made  by  narrow- 
minded  philanthropists,  the  most  fatal  is 
the  mistake  that  there  is  any  class  in  the 
community,  however  poor  or  ignorant, 
who  in  after  life  will  ever  say  grace  rap- 
turously over  recollections  of  an  early  diet 
of  moral  bran  or  sawdust.  If  all  the  phy- 
sical forces  of  nature  —  light,  heat,  elec- 
tricity, gravitation,  attraction,  repulsion  — 
are  on  hand  in  every  drop  of  water,  then 
surely  all  the  divine  forces  are  equally 
latent  in  every  child  of  humanity.  A  clear 
perception  of  this  was  it  that  led  Hon. 
Edward  Everett,  at  the  close  of  an  elo- 
quent address,  to  pay  the  tribute  which 
follows  to  the  method  of  education  that 
makes  appeal  to  the  whole  compass  of 
human  nature. 

"  And  thus,  my  friends,  we  are  brought 


174       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

to  the  moral  of  my  remarks,  —  the  supe- 
riority of  the  Warren  Street  system,  which 
aims  to  reHeve  suffering  by  raising  the 
intellectual,  moral,  and  religious  character 
of  the  poor ;  not  only  for  the  sake  of  giv- 
ing them,  in  this  way,  greater  facilities 
toward  earning  a  livelihood,  but  for  the 
sake  of  imparting  to  them  that  self-respect 
which  is  the  great  safeguard  against  a  life 
of  dependence.  This  is  the  great  benefit 
of  all  education,  not  the  positive  know- 
ledge it  bestows,  however  useful  and  con- 
venient, but  the  elevation  of  mind  and  the 
sense  of  character  derived  from  the  pos- 
session of  any  kind  of  useful  knowledge ; 
from  being  placed  in  conscious  communion 
with  nature,  with  kindred  mind,  with  the 
spiritual  world,  with  God  himself. 

"  On  the  other  hand,  the  utterly  igno- 
rant person  leads  the  existence  of  a  brute 
beast,  of  a  poisonous  weed,  of  a  dull  clod. 
Napoleon  said  that  he  supposed  there  were 
persons  buried  in  the  gloomy  depths  of 
Paris  who  had  never  heard  his  name,  or 
had  no  distinct  idea  who  or  what  he  was. 
I  fear  that  there  is  many  a  poor  creature 
roaming  our  streets  who  has  no  idea,  I  do 


OLD   CHAPEL  BOYS.  I  75 

not  say  of  the  history  or  geography  of  the 
land  in  which  he  lives,  but  no  idea  of  moral 
relations, —  none  of  the  duties  of  parent 
and  child,  of  magistrate  and  citizen, —  no 
idea  of  life,  of  time,  of  eternity,  of  Christ, 
or  of  God. 

"  Who  does  not  feel  that,  so  long  as  this 
is  the  case,  true  charity  is  not  to  feed  the 
hungry,  but  to  impart  spiritual  food  to  the 
starving  soul  ?  This,  sir  [pointing  to  Mr. 
Barnard],  is  the  great  object  of  your  insti- 
tution and  your  labors  ;  an  object  compared 
with  which  the  benevolence  which  begins 
and  ends  in  almsgiving  deserves  not  the 
name  of  charity." 


XVIII. 

THE   INEVITABLE   DAY. 

At  the  time  of  the  firing  on  Fort  Sum- 
ter in  1 86 1  and  the  outbreak  of  the  civil 
war,  Warren  Street  Chapel  had  been 
steadily  doing  its  work  for  twenty-five 
years.  Now,  suddenly,  a  severe  extra 
strain  was  brought  to  bear  on  Mr.  Barnard 
himself  and  on  the  faithful  band  of  men 
and  women  who  year  in,  year  out,  had  stood 
so  stanchly  by  him.  Those  were  the  days 
of  extemporized  sanitary  commissions,  be- 
fore as  yet,  through  the  patriotic  genius 
of  Dr.  Henry  W.  Bellows  and  Frederick 
Law  Olmstead,  the  great  National  Sanitary 
Commission  had  been  organized.  Night 
and  day  was  the  work  carried  on  of  forward- 
ing to  the  front  hospital  necessities  of  every 
kind.  The  chapel,  moreover,  became  and 
continued  to  be  an  active  recruiting  office, 
consecrating  itself  further  to  the  work  of 
corresponding  with  and  faithfully  looking 


THE  INEVITABLE  DAY.  177 

out  for  those  it  had  sent  into  the  army  in 
the  resolve  to  prove  "  a  watchful,  waiting, 
loving  mother"  to  all  who  should  return 
sick  or  wounded.  Mr.  Barnard  himself 
was  on  fire,  calling  upon  his  flock  from 
the  pulpit  and  in  the  evening  schools  to 
enlist  in  the  sacred  cause. 

The  response  to  the  fervor  of  these 
appeals  was  just  what  might  have  been 
expected  of  an  institution  conducted  in 
such  a  spirit ;  so  that,  at  the  close  of  the 
war,  the  next  annual  report  could  announce 
with  a  pride  fully  justified :  "  Our  hum- 
ble chapel  has  put  five  hundred  men,  pu- 
pils and  graduates,  into  the  army  of  our 
Union.  Its  free,  wide,  and  welcome  em- 
brace, in  Sunday-school  and  service,  of 
such  throngs  as  the  days  that  are  gone  fa- 
vored us  with,  its  broad  sweep  of  equally 
large  hosts  in  charity  school,  evening  school, 
and  the  ministry  at  large,  enabled  it  to  do 
its  recruiting  to  this  proud  degree.  Long 
before  the  crisis  came,  even  from  the  very 
outset,  if  we  mistake  not,  certain  patriotic 
fires  have  blazed  upon  our  lowly  altars, 
which  warmed  our  lads  and  all  their  com- 
rades to  the  cause  of  the  country.     It  could 


178       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

not  be  otherwise.  We  were  wiser  than  we 
knew.  And  now  our  roll  of  honor  is  a 
long  and  goodly  one  indeed." 

All  here  was  exultation  in  Mr.  Barnard's 
tone.  How  soon,  alas!  was  another  note 
to  be  struck.  To  well-nigh  every  human 
life,  most  especially  in  the  experience  of 
high  -  wrought  and  compassionating  na- 
tures, there  comes  inevitably  its  tragic 
hour.  At  some  one  juncture  the  outward 
pressure  proves  too  crushing  and  the  in- 
ward spirit  breaks.  Then  the  soul  knows 
its  Gethsemane. 

Signal  faults  of  his  own  temperament, 
signal  excesses  of  his  own  qualities,  had 
Charles  F.  Barnard,  as,  indeed,  have  almost 
all  men  who  achieve  anything  marked  in 
the  world.  From  the  start,  as  has  been 
clearly  indicated  farther  back,  there  went 
along  with  his  exuberant  capacity  of  joy 
and  radiant  vision  of  a  redeemed  humanity, 
that  drop  of  black  blood  in  the  veins  which 
ever  means  reaction  into  deeps  of  gloom, 
or  into  a  torture-house  of  ragged  nervous 
misery. 

Endowed  with  a  vitality  of  constitution 
that   enabled  him  to  withstand  the  wear 


THE   INEVITABLE  DAY.  179 

and  tear  of  work  kept  up  for  long  periods 
under  high  pressure,  none  the  less  through 
overaction  had  he  been  steadily  preparing 
for  himself  the  severest  physical  and  men- 
tal penalties.  Of  his  own  institution  not 
merely  founder  but  perpetual  inspirer,  the 
stamp  of  his  own  personality  was  set  upon 
everything  bound  up  with  it.  Its  pecuni- 
ary affairs  had  involved  him  in  constant 
anxieties,  while  his  high-pitched  ideal  of 
what  it  should  be  as  foster  parent  to  all 
who  had  come  under  its  influence  had 
entailed  an  enormous  correspondence  with 
old  pupils  all  over  the  country  and  in  for- 
eign lands.  Moreover,  by  day  and  night 
for  years  had  he  been  breathing  a  vitiated 
air  necessitated  by  the  close  quarters  to 
which,  spite  of  enlargements  from  time  to 
time  of  the  building,  he  was  doomed. 

For  several  years  before  the  outbreak  of 
the  Civil  War,  it  was  already  becoming 
evident  that  Mr.  Barnard  was  an  over- 
wrought man,  but  with  the  extra  strain  of 
excitement  and  work  now  suddenly  precip- 
itated, this  became  increasingly  more  clear. 
He  had  already  sought  retirement  and 
change  in  the  country,  in  West  Newton, 


l8o      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

and  given  up  attendance  on  the  night 
schools ;  and  it  was  hoped  that  this  relief 
would  suffice  to  restore  his  health.  It 
failed  to  do  so. 

Increasingly,  even  to  Mr.  Barnard's 
stanchest  and  tenderest  friends,  was  it 
now  evident  that  his  mind  had  lost  bal- 
ance, and  that  his  schemes  were  assuming 
shapes  too  visionary  for  practical  success. 
Insane  he  was  not,  then  or  at  a  later  pe- 
riod. But  the  emotional  oscillation  from 
extremes  of  exaltation  to  extremes  of  de- 
pression was  assuming  a  perilous  intensity. 

Never,  in  his  best  days,  had  he  had 
much  idea  of  what  business  men  call  "  the 
value  of  money,"  at  any  rate  in  their  sense 
of  the  extreme  difficulty  of  making  it.  Of 
the  "  value  of  money  "  as  a  means  of  reliev- 
ing distress  and  organizing  new  schemes 
for  elevating  the  neglected  and  ignorant, 
he  entertained,  indeed,  the  most  exalted 
conceptions,  finding  great  difficulty  in  so 
much  as  understanding  why  it  should  be 
prized  for  anything  else.  Now,  however, 
it  was  plain  that  on  this  subject  his  prac- 
tical judgment  was  becoming  too  much 
impaired  to  make  him  longer  a* safe  admin- 


THE  INEVITABLE  DAY.  i8l 

istrator.  The  moment  his  heart  was  ap- 
pealed to,  he  would  act  on  the  spot,  regard- 
less of  consequences,  thus  running  the  in- 
stitution into  debt.  Moreover,  under  the 
pressure  of  nervous  restlessness,  his  power 
of  continuity  was  greatly  weakened,  and 
he  would  pass  without  due  reflection  from 
one  hastily  devised  scheme  to  another. 
When  to  all  this  is  added  the  fact  that  the 
immense  insistency  of  will,  and  the  readi- 
ness to  shoulder  responsibility,  which  had 
been  the  very  conditions  of  his  success, 
now  took  the  shape  of  autocratic  pride  and 
refusal  to  brook  contradiction,  it  will  be 
clear  that  here  was  but  one  more  example 
of  that  "  last  infirmity  of  noble  mind,"  an 
overwrought  nature  become  the  victim  of 
the  "  excess  of  its  own  high  qualities." 

Mr.  Barnard,  however,  could  recognize 
nothing  of  this  in  himself.  In  the  fever  of 
exaltation,  never  did  his  mind  seem  to  him 
so  fertile  in  resources,  never  the  future  he 
meant  to  open  up  to  his  institution  so  ra- 
diant. But  to  his  firmest  friends  and  co- 
workers, the  men  and  women  who  loyally 
and  at  such  self-sacrifice  had  stood,  year 
in,  year  out,  at  his  side,  it  looked  so  differ- 


1 82       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

ent  They  loved  and  revered  him.  Not 
for  the  world  would  they  cause  him  pain. 
Most  willingly  would  they  have  given  him 
a  colleague,  a  younger  man,  who  should 
bear  the  brunt  of  the  work.  But  this  was 
sheer  impossibility.  Not  even  in  his  ear- 
lier days  —  still  less  in  his  present  state  of 
mind  —  was  he  a  man  to  work  in  double 
harness,  where  his  own  striding  pace  would 
have  to  accommodate  itself  to  the  time  or 
reach  of  another's.  Therefore  reluctantly, 
and  with  great  sadness,  was  the  conclusion 
arrived  at  by  the  committee  of  the  chapel 
that,  for  his  own  best  good  and  for  the 
future  of  the  institution,  his  relation  with 
it  must  be  brought  to  an  end. 

The  blow  to  Mr.  Barnard  was  a  terrible 
one,  and  for  a  time  nearly  bereft  him  of 
reason.  He  could  see  nothing  in  it  but 
the  cruelest  ingratitude.  The  act  tore  him 
away  from  relations  cemented  in  his  heart's 
blood.  By  night  and  day  for  nearly  thirty 
years  he  had  no  existence  apart  from  the 
beloved  chapel.  He  had  rocked  its  cra- 
dle, watched  over  its  growing  youth,  shared 
a  glorious  pride  in  its  maturity.  From  foun- 
dation to  capstone,  it  and  all  it  stood  for 


THE  INEVITABLE  DAY.  183 

had  been  his  original  idea.  And  now, 
when  it  had  become  the  honor  of  Boston, 
the  parent  of  hke  institutions  in  many 
cities  of  the  land,  the  quickener  of  the  pub- 
lic schools  and  of  churches,  the  spot  sought 
out  for  study  by  philanthropic  travelers 
from  Europe,  the  sacred  hearthstone  of 
grateful  memories  to  thousands  of  its 
pupils  scattered  over  the  wide  world, — 
now  to  be  thus  torn  from  it  and  set  adrift 
on  what  seemed  a  homeless  void,  his  "  oc- 
cupation gone,"  —  this,  to  his  distracted 
heart  was  nothing  short  of  a  death  sen- 
tence. Painful  would  it  be  to  dwell  fur- 
ther on  the  subject.  The  step  had  to  be 
taken.  Years  after,  at  Mr.  Barnard's  fu- 
neral service,  the  whole  issue  was  summed 
up  with  perfect  justice  by  Dr.  James  Free- 
man Clarke  in  a  single  sentence :  "  It  was 
a  sad  thing  that  he  had  to  leave  the  chapel, 
though  I  suppose  it  was  unavoidable,  and 
I  do  not  think  that  he  or  any  one  else  was 
to  blame." 

None  the  less,  how  often  are  the  strictly 
unavoidable  events  of  life,  those  for  which 
nobody  is  to  blame,  the  most  tragic  of  all 
to  poor  humanity !     The  inexorable  law  is 


184      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD, 

there,  but  the  reason  does  not  grasp  it;  the 
loving  kindness  is  there,  but  the  tortured 
heart  does  not  feel  it  It  is  the  pathetic 
story  over  again  of  so  many  household 
experiences,  when  the  day  comes  in  which 
sons  and  daughters  who  have  revered, 
nay  idolized,  a  parent,  find  themselves 
imperatively  called  on,  through  growing 
infirmity  on  the  parent's  part,  to  restrain 
the  will  before  which  heretofore  they  have 
bowed  in  devout  obedience.  Torture  is  it 
to  them  to  take  the  stand,  but  to  the  par- 
ent it  is  the  shock  of  moral  revolution,  the 
sacrilegious  overthrow  of  the  most  sacred 
laws  of  God  and  man.  No  one  is  to 
blame ;  only,  the  father  cannot  be  made  to 
feel  how  the  children's  hearts  are  bleeding, 
while  they  have  to  bear  his  imprecation,  — 

"  How  sharper  than  a  serpent's  tooth  it  is 
To  have  a  thankless  child  ! " 


XIX. 

AN    OUTING    IN    THE    SOUTH. 

At  the  time  of  the  cessation,  in  1864,  of 
Mr.  Barnard's  connection  with  Warren 
Street  Chapel,  its  lands  and  tenements 
were  held  in  trust  by  Charles  Barnard  (the 
father)  and  John  L.  Emmons  of  Boston, 
merchants.  From  this  date  it  was  deemed 
expedient  that  "  the  voluntary  association 
heretofore  existing  for  the  support  of  War- 
ren Street  Chapel  should  be  organized  as 
a  corporation,  for  the  more  effectual  pros- 
ecution of  the  objects  and  purposes  of  the 
said  association."  Accordingly  this  was 
done,  and  the  lands  and  tenements  were 
conveyed  to  the  said  new  corporation  as  a 
new  trustee.  After  an  interval.  Rev.  Wil- 
liam G.  Babcock  was  appointed  superin- 
tendent, remaining  in  charge  till  1881, 
when  he  was  succeeded  by  Rev.  Eber  R. 
Butler,  an  old  chapel  boy  from  near  the 
start,  steeped  in  its  best  traditions,  and  the 
most  loyal  of  lovers  of  its  founder. 


1 86       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

It  lies  outside  the  province  of  this 
memoir  to  follow  the  later  fortunes  of 
the  chapel.  In  strict  justice,  however, 
one  point  in  relation  to  it  is  worthy  of 
emphasis.  Of  too  many  an  institution 
founded  by  the  peculiar  genius  and  sus- 
tained by  the  powerful  will  of  a  single 
innovating  mind  is  it  found  to  hold  true 
that  on  his  removal  or  death  the  whole 
fabric  goes  to  pieces.  Built  up  and  kept 
alive  by  one-man  power,  that  power  taken 
away  there  remains  nothing  to  fall  back 
on.  In  contradiction  of  all  this,  ever  had 
it  been  the  signal  merit  of  Mr.  Barnard 
that  he  so  inspired  and  trained  a  little 
army  of  co-workers  as  to  leave  them  fully 
equipped  to  fight  on  in  the  good  cause 
without  his  personal  leadership,  —  a  little 
army  in  which,  indeed,  such  leadership  in 
actual  presence  had  passed  on  into  spir- 
itual leadership,  —  into  identification  with 
him,  heart  and  soul,  in  the  same  humani- 
tarian enthusiasm.  Such  men  as  Samuel 
Weltch,  John  L.  Emmons,  Josiah  Thomas 
Vose,  Dr.  Henry  I.  Bowditch,  James  Al- 
exander Dupee,  and  others  their  peers,  — 
men   of  large   business  capacity,  sustain- 


AN  OUTING  IN  THE  SOUTH.  187 

ing  high  trusts  in  the  community,  and  yet 
one  in  their  love  and  loyalty  to  the  chapel, 
—  these,  together  with  the  band  of  devoted 
women,  now  rallied  with  fresh  resolve 
around  the  old  flag.  New  features  were 
from  time  to  time  added  to  the  activities 
of  the  institution,  as,  with  the  progress  in 
methods  of  industrial  training,  it  seemed 
desirable  to  give  any  of  them  a  fair  trial  or 
to  set  a  new  object  lesson  for  the  benefit 
of  the  community  at  large.  As  a  sin- 
gle example  here,  at  the  expense  of  Mrs. 
Pauline  Agassiz  Shaw  was  introduced  a 
large  kindergarten,  as  well  as  classes  for 
instruction  in  the  Sloyd  system  of  carpen- 
try and  wood-carving,  —  classes  in  which 
one  hundred  and  fifty  grammar  and  pri- 
mary school  teachers  were  trained  under 
capable  Swedish  teachers  of  the  system. 

To  leave  this  matter,  however,  and  to 
return  once  more  to  the  immediate  sub- 
ject of  the  memoir,  it  is  pleasant  to  record 
that  in  1865,  the  year  following  all  the  pain 
of  the  rupture  of  Mr.  Barnard's  ties  with  the 
chapel,  a  delightful  outing  was  prepared 
for  him  through  the  devotion  of  his  own 
family  circle.     One  of  his  sons  was  officer 


1 88      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

in  a  Union  regiment  then  in  Georgia,  — 
a  regiment,  moreover,  in  which  a  number 
of  the  dear  old  chapel  boys  were  enlisted, 
who  would  be  sure  to  give  their  beloved 
pastor  a  royal  reception.  Moreover,  those 
were  the  high  carnival  days  of  the  eman- 
cipation of  the  slaves,  the  days  in  which, 
in  their  enthusiastic  minds,  all  American 
history  was  translated  into  a  new  Book  of 
Exodus,  in  which  the  Egyptian  bondage, 
the  Red  Sea,  Moses,  and  Miriam  fur- 
nished halos  of  light  and  color  for  the 
transfiguration  of  the  more  realistic  shapes 
of  Lincoln,  Grant,  and  Sherman.  Hap- 
pily, the  scenes  enacting  furnished  to  so 
highly  emotional  a  temperament  as  Mr. 
Barnard's  just  the  reaction  into  love  and 
joy  needful  for  the  healing  of  his  wounded 
spirit.  A  few  extracts  from  his  letters  to 
the  "  Boston  Transcript "  and  the  "  Com- 
monwealth "  will  make  this  clear :  — 

Port  Royal,  St.  Helena  Island, 
P^bruary  13,  1865. 

Yesterday  was  Sunday,  and  I  should 
like  to  tell  you  how  we  passed  it.  No 
holier,  happier  day  ever  blessed  me.  This 
forenoon  I  rode  to  the  church.     It  was  a 


AN  OUTING  IN  THE  SOUTH,  189 

plain,  large  building  of  brick,  erected  in 
1855.  White  men  used  to  hold  forth  here, 
under  the  master's  eye,  in  slavery  times,  to 
whites  and  blacks,  the  former  railed  off 
from  the  latter  in  ways  that  must  have 
looked  strange  to  the  Maker  of  them  all. 
Around  the  house  was  a  grand  and  beau- 
tiful grove  of  live-oaks,  in  their  evergreen 
foliage  and  draped  with  silvery,  sweeping 
moss.  We  went  in.  The  officers  of  the 
church  found  seats  for  us  in  the  crowded 
pews  and  aisles.  But  oh,  what  an  assem- 
bly it  was,  so  hushed,  so  rapt,  so  calm,  so 
exalted !  The  minister,  a  venerable  col- 
ored brother,  was  deaconing  out  a  hymn. 
The  whole  congregation  sang  after  him 
and  with  him,  two  lines  at  a  time.  But 
the  singing  was  such  as  I  had  never  known 
before.  How  can  I  describe  it?  You 
would  have  said  there  must  be  some  great, 
wonderful  organ  or  orchestra  to  produce 
those  tones.  No,  it  was  merely  God's  vox 
humana  stop.  With  it  there  mingled  what 
seemed  to  be  the  song  of  birds,  or,  as  our 
tears  started,  the  sounds  of  beloved  voices 
far  away  from  us  now  on  earth,  far  above 
us  now  in  heaven. 


IQO      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

Another  account  of  a  service  in  a  negro 
church  furnishes  a  humorous  illustration 
of  how  hard  it  was  in  those  days  for  Af- 
rican enthusiasm  to  confine  itself  to  a 
Quaker  regime  of  sacred  silence :  — 

To  the  Editor  of  the  "  Commonwealth^ 

We  heard  of  the  surrender  of  Charles- 
ton, on  the  19th  of  February,  in  a  crowded 
colored  church  in  Savannah.  It  was  Sun- 
day. The  day  and  the  scene  we  shall  never 
forget.  Our  colored  brother,  the  minister 
of  the  congregation,  seeing  several  white 
folks  among  his  hearers,  apologized  to 
them  for  the  absence  of  preaching,  as  it 
was  their  day  0/  discipline,  and  sermonizing 
must  be  laid  aside.  Alas  for  his  scheme! 
He  read  the  account  in  the  Book  of  Joshua 
of  the  capture  of  Ai,  and  it  was  so  perti- 
nent to  our  times  that,  before  he  knew  it, 
he  preached  a  capital  military  sermon. 

General  Littlefield  then  arose  and  read 
an  extra  which  had  just  reached  him,  be- 
ginning, "  Charleston  is  ours !  "  We  were 
in  the  pulpit,  and  could  oversee  the  whole 
house.  What  a  sight  it  was!  Such  smiles 
and  tears,  such  signs  of  joy  and  devotion, 


AN  OUTING  IN  THE  SOUTH.         191 

it  was  never  ours  to  witness  before.  We 
then  took  our  turn.  Two  colored  chap- 
lains followed.  The  last  of  them,  brother 
to  Thomas  Simms  of  historic  name,  was 
to  our  mind  the  best  preacher  of  us  all. 
He  closed  his  truly  eloquent  address  by 
alluding  to  an  earlier  and  prouder  hour 
when  his  bones  burned  within  him  as  he 
heard  how  an  old,  strange  man  —  crazy 
fellow,  as  they  called  him  —  struck  a  blow, 
far  up  toward  the  North,  which  shook 
Virginia  and  every  slave  State.  "  Now," 
cried  he,  "John  Brown's  body  lies  moul- 
dering in  the  grave,  and  we  '11  go  marching 
on!"  The  pent-up  feelings  of  the  whole 
assembly  only  needed  such  a  vent  as  this, 
and  swept  forth  at  once  in  a  full  and  hearty 
chorus.  We  left  the  church  after  a  ses- 
sion of  three  hours  and  a  series  of  five 
sermons,  —  pretty  well  for  a  day  of  disci- 
pline, 

A  final  extract  will  show  the  rare  privi- 
lege Mr.  Barnard  enjoyed  in  being  per- 
mitted to  enter  the  harbor  of  Charleston 
in  the  steamer  Planter,  under  comm.and, 
as  captain,  of  the  same  colored  man,  Rob- 


192       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

ert  Small,  who  had  with  such  splendid 
audacity  sailed  her  out  in  1862  under  the 
guns  of  Fort  Sumter,  and  handed  her  over 
to  the  Federal  fleet. 

"  It  was  indeed  a  privilege  to  enter 
Charleston,  as  we  did  recently,  through 
the  courtesy  of  Major-General  Saxton,  in 
such  a  steamer  as  the  Planter,  and  with 
such  a  captain  as  Robert  Small.  It  was 
their  first  appearance  in  the  harbor  since 
the  memorable  morning  of  their  departure 
in  1862.  The  fog  detained  us  for  a  few 
hours  when  we  arrived  at  the  bar.  When 
it  cleared  away,  you  can  imagine  with  what 
cheers  our  anchor  came  up,  and  with  what 
smiles  of  satisfaction  the  vessel  and  her 
commander  swept  by  the  silenced  and  dis- 
mantled Sumter,  and  hauled  in  to  the 
waiting,  wondering  wharves  of  the  ruined 
city.  Whenever  we  went  on  shore,  we 
had  only  to  say  to  the  colored  people, 
'  The  Planter  and  Captain  Small  are  at  the 
dock,'  and  away  they  all  hurried  to  greet 
the  well-known  guests.  '  Too  sweet  to 
think  of,'  cried  one  noble-looking  old  man, 
who  had  evidently  waited  long  for  the 
good  news  of  the  day." 


AN  OUTING  IN  THE  SOUTH.         193 

On  his  return,  in  1865,  from  the  South, 
Mr.  Barnard  continued  to  reside  in  West 
Newton,  Massachusetts.  Nearly  nineteen 
years  were  still  before  him  till  his  death 
in  1884.  They  were  years  of  alternation 
between  seasons  of  joy  and  periods  of 
dejection  and  darkness.  In  his  perpetual 
love  of  nature,  and  in  a  return  to  his  early 
habits  of  miscellaneous  reading,  he  found 
great  solace.  Moreover,  the  warmth  and 
variety  of  the  greetings  he  constantly  re- 
ceived from  those  he  had  befriended  in 
the  past  were  living  proof  to  him  that  he 
had  not  lived  in  vain.  But  to  a  nature  of 
such  abounding  vitality  and  prodigality  of 
benevolent  instinct,  and  after  a  life  spent 
in  such  a  whirl  of  philanthropic  action,  his 
enforced  separation  from  the  idol  of  his 
heart  remained  his  "  thorn  in  the  flesh " 
that  to  the  end  would  not  "  depart  from 
him."  Under  uncontrollable  restlessness, 
h^  more  than  once  sought  to  resume  his 
former  work,  taking  charge  for  a  time  of 
a  somewhat  similar  institution  under  the 
auspices  of  the  Harvard  Church  in  Charles- 
town,  Massachusetts.  But  he  was  not  suc- 
cessful there.     No  longer  was  he  the  same 


194      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

man,  neither  had  he  the  same  devoted 
backing  from  a  host  of  able  and  self- 
sacrificing  co-workers.  No,  his  life-work 
was  done. 

From  time  to  time,  as  notably  on  his 
seventieth  birthday,  pleasant  ovations  came 
to  him  from  his  hosts  of  still -surviving 
friends.  On  this  special  occasion  they 
flocked  in  troops  to  Warren  Street  Chapel, 
and  there,  in  the  midst  of  the  trophies  of 
his  former  success,  welcomed  him  with 
loving  hearts  ;  the  feeling  of  all  present 
voicing  itself  in  a  memorial  poem  by  Rev. 
Augustus  M.  Lord,  now  of  Providence, 
Rhode  Island:  — 

"  Up  from  dark  lanes  and  alleys, 
Up  from  the  noisy  street, 
Comes  a  murmur  of  thanksgiving, 
As  of  voices  young  and  sweet. 

"  And  a  crowd  of  joyful  faces 
Above  him  seem  to  bend, 
As  they  whisper  a  benediction  ^ 

O'er  the  children's  loving  friend,  — 

"He  who  so  oft  has  rekindled 
In  the  pallid  cheek  its  bloom. 
He  who  has  let  in  the  sunlight 
To  so  many  a  darkened  room ; 


AN  OUTING  IN  THE  SOUTH.  1 95 

"He  who  has  stilled  the  throbbing 
Of  so  many  troubled  hearts, 
And  wiped  away  the  tear-drop 
That  to  sorrow's  eyelid  starts ; 

"  He  who  has  spent  his  lifetime 
For  the  good  of  his  fellow-men, 
Till  the  tides  of  time  have  measured 
His  threescore  years  and  ten ; 

"  Again  the  murmur  rises, 

And  I  join  the  crowd  and  pray, 
'  God  love  him,  bless  him,  crown  him, 
On  this  his  natal  day.'  " 


XX. 

CONCLUSION. 

Some  months  before  his  death,  at  the 
age  of  seventy-six,  Charles  Francis  Bar- 
nard voluntarily  sought  retreat  in  the 
McLean  Asylum,  Somerville.  "  He  had 
been  feeble  for  a  long  time,  and  although 
his  mind  was  not  affected,  he  desired  to 
enter  some  refuge  where  he  could  have 
complete  rest."  There,  November  8,  1884, 
he  quietly  passed  away.  The  funeral  ser- 
vices, held  in  the  Unitarian  Church  in 
West  Newton,  were  conducted  by  his 
classmate.  Dr.  James  Freeman  Clarke,  and 
by  Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale,  each  of 
whom  paid  touching  tributes  to  his  life 
and  work. 

At  a  later  date,  a  memorial  service  was 
held  in  Warren  Street  Chapel,  at  which 
Dr.  Henry  I.  Bowditch  and  other  old  as- 
sociates recorded  their  grateful  testimony 
to  his  signal  services.     Dr.  Bowditch,  emi- 


CONCLUSION.  197 

nent  alike  as  physician  and  philanthropist, 
spoke  with  touching  feeling  of  his  life-long 
relations  with  his  early  classmate.  On  his 
own  return  from  Europe,  upon  the  com- 
pletion of  his  professional  studies,  he  said 
he  found  himself  out  of  touch  with  the 
then  existing  churches  in  Boston.  None 
of  them  were  congenial  to  him.  The  non- 
sectarian  church  he  craved,  he  found  at 
Warren  Street  Chapel,  and  at  once  pro- 
posed to  Mr.  Barnard  to  assist  him  in  con- 
ducting it,  provided,  with  his  avowed  be- 
liefs, he  could  be  free  to  teach  a  perfectly 
natural  religion.  To  this  his  friend  cor- 
dially consented,  and  they  worked  together 
in  entire  harmony  till  1844.  Then  a  tem- 
porary rupture,  growing  out  of  the  anti- 
slavery  agitation,  took  place  between  them. 
Dr.  Bowditch  insisted  that  the  subject  of 
slavery  and  of  the  relation  of  the  United 
States  to  it  should  be  made  part  of  the 
instruction  and  exhortation  given  the  chil- 
dren. Mr.  Barnard  absolutely  opposed 
this,  insisting  that  it  was  foreign  to  his 
peculiar  work,  and  that  he  had  already  all 
the  burden  he  could  stagger  under. .  None 
the  less,  Dr.  Bowditch  felt  that  not  to  take 


198       CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

this  stand  would  involve  the  forfeiture  of 
his  sense  of  independence  as  a  teacher,  and 
make  him  subservient  to  the  slaveholders' 
interest.  And  so,  like  Paul  and  Barnabas, 
the  two  fiery  apostles  parted  asunder. 

Later  in  life,  however,  they  came  cor- 
dially together  again,  and  to  the  end  Dr. 
Bowditch  remained  a  faithful  supporter  of 
the  chapel  work.  "  Mr.  Barnard,"  he  said, 
"  was  a  very  obstinate  man  in  carrying 
through  what  he  had  determined  upon, 
and  that  was  one  of  his  merits.  I  would 
not,"  continued  he,  "give  a  farthing  for 
anybody's  service  in  a  good  cause  who  is 
not  obstinate.  Whatever  mistakes  he  may 
have  made  were  trivial  in  comparison  with 
the  great  good  he  did  in  the  community. 
He  was  the  friend  and  helper  of  the  poor. 
He  visited  and  ministered  to  them.  The 
distinctions  of  religious  belief  were  naught 
to  him  in  such  matters.  If  there  was  an 
unbeliever  in  the  neighborhood,  his  chil- 
dren were  sure  to  be  sought  out  and  in- 
vited in.  He  was  a  good  and  true  man, 
and  his  memory  must  be  honored.  The 
best  way  to  do  that  is  to  perpetuate  the 
work  he  began  and  so  long  continued  in 


CONCL  USION.  1 99 

the  chapel,  which,  for  myself,  I  hope,  will 
hereafter  be  called  the  '  Barnard  Chapel 
for  Children.' " 

Easy  would  it  be  to  multiply  to  any  extent 
the  glowing  tributes  paid  after  his  death  to 
the  character  and  services  of  the  subject  of 
this  memoir.  They  would  prove,  however, 
but  repetitions  of  one  another.  Better  is 
it,  then,  to  close  with  a  single  one,  an  ex- 
tract from  a  memorial  sermon  preached  by 
Dr.  James  Freeman  Clarke  from  the  text, 
"  If  thine  eye  be  single,  thy  whole  body 
shall  be  full  of  light:"  — 

"  In  speaking  to  you  to-day  of  Charles 
F.  Barnard  and  his  work  in  Boston,  I  have 
taken  this  text  as  an  appropriate  motto ; 
for  Mr.  Barnard  seems  to  me  to  be  a  strik- 
ing illustration  of  its  truth.  Singleness  of 
purpose,  a  sincere  conviction,  the  absence 
of  side-ends  and  inferior  motives,  tend  to 
superior  insight.  A  double-minded  man, 
on  the  contrary,  is  unstable  in  all  his  ways. 
Singleness  of  purpose  is  a  great  power. 
Thus  one  man  fixes  his  whole  mind  on  the 
condition  of  the  prisoner;  another  on  that 
of  the  slave,  or  of  the  blind,  or  the  insane, 
or  the  poor,  and  so  each  becomes  a  leader 


200      CHARLES  FRANCIS  BARNARD. 

and  an  authority  in  his  own  special  depart- 
ment of  thought  and  work. 

"  The  Warren  Street  Chapel  was  his 
pride  and  joy.  It  was  his  discovery.  Into 
it  he  put  the  best  part  of  his  life,  and,  I  am 
told,  a  large  part  of  his  means.  It  was  a 
sad  thing  that  he  had  to  leave  it,  though  I 
suppose  it  was  unavoidable,  and  I  do  not 
think  that  he  or  any  one  else  was  to  blame. 
But  I  wish  to  repeat  here  what  I  said  at 
his  funeral,  that,  sad  as  that  separation 
was,  it  proved  that  his  heart  was  not  in  his 
position  but  in  his  work;  for  he  did  not 
retire  from  his  ministry,  but  continued  it 
in  another  place  and  in  a  humbler  way. 
Personal  disappointment  did  not  chill  his 
enthusiasm.  Whenever  I  saw  him,  to  the 
end  of  his  life,  his  heart  was  still  in  the 
cause  to  which  he  had  given  his  youth,  his 
manhood,  and  his  age. 

" '  After  life's  fitful  fever,  he  sleeps  well.' 
He  has  gone  to  join  the  company  of  the 
modern  saints.  Our  day  has  seen  saints 
of  a  new  order,  canonized,  not  by  the  de- 
cree of  a  pope  or  the  vote  of  a  council,  but 
by  the  love  of  the  human  heart.  To  the 
glorious  company  of  apostles,  the  goodly 


CONCLUSION.  20 1 

fellowship  of  prophets,  and  the  noble  army 
of  martyrs,  our  period  has  added  the  gen- 
erous friends  of  mankind.  The  early 
Christian  ages  saw  the  saints  of  rapt  devo- 
tion and  lonely  piety,  —  those  who  went 
apart  from  men  as  anchorites  and  monks, 
to  lead  a  life  of  prayer.  Those  ages  saw 
the  saints  of  self-denial  and  renunciation ; 
those  who  renounced  the  joys  of  life,  cruci- 
fying the  flesh  with  its  desires  and  affec- 
tions. But  our  time  has  added  the  saints 
of  philanthropy,  who  imitate  their  Master 
in  going  about  doing  good;  who  follow 
Him  in  teaching  the  blind  to  see,  the  lame 
to  walk,  and  in  soothing  the  demonized 
spirits  of  the  insane,  leaving  them  clothed 
and  in  their  right  mind.  To  this  class  our 
friend  belongs ;  among  them  he  has  his 
place  with  Oberlin  and  Howard,  with  Hor- 
ace Mann  and  Dr.  Howe,  with  Florence 
Nightingale  and  the  great  brotherhood 
and  sisterhood  of  charity.  These  are  the 
saints  of  good  works,  followers  of  St. 
James,  visiting  the  fatherless  and  widows 
in  their  affliction,  and  having  for  their 
motto  the  saying  of  Abou  Ben  Adhem :  — 

"  Write  me  as  one  that  loves  his  fellow-men !  " 


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